syllogism comments on Learning languages efficiently. - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Eitan_Zohar 02 March 2014 03:57PM

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Comment author: syllogism 04 March 2014 10:35:43AM 0 points [-]

I'm interested in developing better language learning software.

For the movie case, do you think these would be helpful? Any other ideas?

  • Read in the subtitles file before viewing, so that vocab can be checked and learned via spaced repetition
  • Option to slow down the dialogue, with pitch-shifting to keep it from sounding weird and bassy
Comment author: someonewrongonthenet 04 March 2014 11:15:07PM *  0 points [-]

Slow-down should surely be helpful...I would think that ideally you want the words-per-minute to approximately correspond to the speeds seen in infant-directed-speech.

I'd generally opt to watch a movie that you've seen many times but don't remember word for word, to prevent translation, so I wouldn't personally watch the subtitles before reading - but not everyone is me so maybe you should test a few people first?

In terms of subtitles, I'd say fewer words, more high quality is better. The most useful thing I think would be explanations of idioms, expressions, and other things that can't be understood literally...as well as explanations of un-common words.

For example, if a movie had the line "You're really gonna hand over the Avatar for a stupid piece of parchment?" then the subtitles would say "parchment - a primitive page made out of animal skin", since you couldn't possibly know that from context. (though I suppose one might argue that this type of information is not very important for a speaker starting out)