Turning on the subtitles while children are watching television can double the chances of a child becoming good at reading† . It’s so brilliantly simple and can help children’s literacy so much that we want to shout it from the rooftops!
Just do it!
I can be a light sleeper, but I habitually go to sleep watching TV, so … I got custom-made earplugs that are fantastic.
So I turned on the subtitles and turned off the volume so I could follow along with my earplugs in.
Now, I presume that most of the subtitle work is now done with speech-to-text software, and not by transcriptionists (old school), but the subtitles can sometimes be so far off of what’s being said as to be unintelligible and confusing.
[I know this because I’ll also occasionally watch this TV during the day when I do *not* have the earplugs in, so I can correlate the audio to the text]
I’m not sure if this is true of all programming, or maybe just live TV (eg, the news), but I might check on this before deciding if it’s better for my kids or not. I assume some things could be subtitled in advance and may be highly accurate. Dunno.
Interesting link, though.
I concur on the efficacy of subtitles. Broadcast TV might be garbled though movies usually have it sorted out
From the ‘Turn on the Subtitles’ website FAQ’s:
Are you suggesting they are on for all TV programmes?
No, just those aimed at children between the ages 6-10.
But I don’t think that watching same-language subtitles, even if they are far from accurate, can harm children. It will accustom them to seeing text associated with the material they are watching, even if the text is not not word-for-word.
Try it yourself withsubtitled foreign-language movies etc. I regularly watch an Italian cop show where the soundtrack language is very regional/colloquial but the (English) text is simple and straightforward. IANAIS, but I get a lot from both hearing and seeing.
An anecdote: I watched part of the BBC ‘Pride and Prejudice’ subtitled in Norwegian with some of my family who are Norwegian. I Am Not A Norwegian Speaker either.
A sentence I recall as something like “Really, Mr Darcy, I do not believe that Mama could possibly approve such a course of action on your part” was translated as:
“Nej!”
I immediately understood what “Nej” meant! And became even fonder of both the spoken and the written word.
Well, MPSIMS!
I’m a big fan of the Metropolitan Opera, where you have the option of seeing subtitles in their transmissions. Occasionally the subtitles get screwed up, like the timing is off. It can be hysterical to read a character singing someone else’s lyrics.
It’s fun watching a live hockey game with the closed captioning on.
I’ve heard of people using the closed captioning to help learn English as a second language as well.
I use the closed captioning a lot. TV shows with loud background music or actors with heavy accents (looking at you, Top Gear!). Also if I’m doing new workout video so I can read what’s coming up and have a chance of keeping up with the instructor.
In the UK only live reporting is subtitled using speech-to-text software, and it’s specialist software for subtitling. It still needs a person to work it and make changes when they can. But it’s much harder than it looks, so there will always be errors.
All pre-recorded programmes with subtitles in the UK have actual people working on them.
I think it’s the same for the US for the simple reason that text-to-speech subtitles would be so terrible as to be unusable.
Different channels in the US probably vary in the quality of their subtitles - some might just go “here are some words on a screen, we did our best, bitches, what more do you want!” while others actually do their best to make the spoken words match with the written words at the time they’re said. Again, that’s more complicated than it sounds.
Thet’s the Queen’s English, right there! Or are you talking about Matt Damon?
I’ve heard that this is part of the reason Scandinavians are so good at English - they watch a LOT of english language TV and film from a very young age, and use captions rather than dubbing.
Matt Le Blanc?
But yeah, they’re not what I would have thought of as particularly strong accents even for people outside the UK. Some British shows I’d expect to be challenging; I’m struggling to come up with examples, but in any case, this wouldn’t have been one.
No, I was referring to Freddie Flintoff mostly.
I also watch Doctor Who with the captions on.
It seems to often help long-term English learners (LTELs) to have English subtitles on. They often have a mismatch between their written and verbal skill levels — generally it’s the reading and writing that are farther behind. They can use their listening fluency, which can be quite high, to help with their reading.
They can also see how new vocabulary words are spelled — which is often a bear in English if you’re working solely by ear. LTELs can often sound very fluent when speaking, but analysis shows they usually have a far smaller working vocabulary than their peers.