Underrated SERIES to Perfect Your English + The Subtitle Debate

Learning English with TV Shows is all good. But not all genres are created equal. This is a guide to the most underrated genres of shows that you might be ignoring. Yes, Friends and How I Met Your Mother are fun and stuff, but you might be sleeping on where the learning is actually happening. This episode is a wake up call for those of you whose main exposure to English is related to your TV. + Let's end the subtitle debate. This episode is ALSO a guide for how to use subtitles the right way, as well as strategies you can start using to really challenge yourself and ge to that next level. I really liked this episode. I hope you agree 🫶

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript

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Hey, what's up? Welcome to another episode of English with Dane, a podcast designed to help you enjoy the process of perfecting your English. As always, I'm your host, Dane, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at English with Dane. On today's episode, we're going to talk about which types of TV shows or series you should and shouldn't be watching if your goal is to work on your English. But it's not just going to be a list. We're going to talk about genres, genres you should be paying attention to as well as pitfalls or traps that we tend to fall into. I thought it would also be useful to discuss the whole subtitle debate to finally get to the bottom of it, using scientific research, of course. And we'll finish off by talking about how to deal with the unnecessary pressure we sometimes put on ourselves when using TV shows as learning tools. I think this is a really cool episode, so let's start the show. You are listening to episode 33 of season two of English with Dane. Hit it. The reason I'm doing this episode is because a lot of you have messaged me asking more about the strategies behind using TV shows as a learning tool. You've asked me about frequency, level, pace, subtitles, recommendations, and other stuff too. I thought I would do this episode to kind of answer all of those questions at once. So here we go. If your goal is to casually watch TV shows, enjoy yourself, and just pick up a few things here or there, then whatever you're doing is probably fine. If you want to sit down after dinner and just enjoy an episode of Modern Family with your husband or wife or kids, and you're watching it with subtitles in English and following along without much effort, then that's great. You're going to be learning whether you like it or not. If you're struggling or finding it difficult to follow along, then maybe it's not the right show for you to watch from an English learning perspective. That's really important from an English learning perspective. If your goal is to just enjoy some TV time and you prefer to watch it in Spanish, then that's cool. It's just not the show for you to be practicing with, and that's okay. Maybe you have to separate fun TV time and learning TV time, and there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe you need to be watching a slow-paced documentary. Maybe you need to be watching Planet Earth or Blue Planet, both incredible documentaries with slow and descriptive narration, courtesy of the great Sir David Attenborough. Maybe you need to be watching some true crime documentaries on Netflix where they slowly take you through events. Maybe that's the best way for you to use TV as a tool. This is all up to you. I also can't give you advice without knowing your needs. Not everyone needs to learn the same thing. So let's talk about genres. True crime is maybe one of the most underrated genres when it comes to using TV as a learning tool. True crime documentaries have a very specific style of English. There's clear and slow-paced narration, there's repeated vocabulary, there's emotional storytelling, which our brains like for remembering things, and most importantly, there's chronological explanations. This last one is great. They use clear timelines and events to take you through what happened, as well as giving you different accounts of said events. You also get real interviews with different people or suspects, so it checks the box for real-world English, which is super important. A lot of sitcoms or situational comedies, like Modern Family or How I Met Your Mother, although they have realistic dialogue, they don't necessarily reflect how people really talk. It's scripted, and at the end of the day, every line of dialogue has a purpose. They move the story along and set up what's coming next. True crime documentaries have less of that. With true crime, you'll also run into or encounter different accents, which is something that a lot of sitcoms are missing, so your ear becomes familiar with different intonations, which is something you need to be able to do in the real world. I think the most valuable thing though is that clear narration. It's really like a clean type of input. The timeline-based language is also super valuable. You'll hear stuff like, first the police arrived, or later that night, at around 9 p.m., a few days later, meanwhile, eventually, this led investigators to those are all really useful structures to learn. After all, it's storytelling, which is what a big percentage of our day-to-day communication ends up being, termina siendo, ends up being. Now let's talk reality TV. You might be allergic to reality TV, but it's actually a really underrated genre for English learning. Reality TV is full of real-world English because it's usually just people sharing their opinions on things and other people reacting. It's got conflict, disagreement, problem solving, complaining, all things you need to be able to do in English if you want to feel comfortable in the language. Reality TV is all about sharing your feelings, right? You'll hear a lot of stuff like, I just feel like, or honestly, the thing is, I'm not gonna lie, but here's the deal, or that really bothered me because, and it happens over and over again. It's funny because the reason some people hate reality TV is actually what makes it a great learning tool. The constant repetition of these natural sentence starters really gets burned into your brain, and you'd be amazed how quickly you start incorporating them into your life. You'll also get really good at predicting how sentences end, which is also an underrated aspect of language learning. Furthermore, oh furthermore, I just didn't want to say also, whatever, also, it's not like reality TV stars have super deep vocabulary, so it's really easy to understand them. Reality TV is also really contextual, which our brains love when it comes to retention. You're much more likely to remember the language used in an emotional conversation than in a speech or a presentation or a class for that matter. Plus, the way these shows are edited, which is at times really frustrating because they drag things out, alargan mucho las cosas, they drag things out, means that you'll probably hear the same sentence or part of a conversation three or four times. Perfect. That's exactly what we want. Plus, you get that real-world English too. So although reality TV might really grind your gears, como que te puedes sacar de quicio, it might really grind your gears. I really believe that it's an underrated tool for English learning. It actually helped me a lot with my Portuguese. I learned a bunch watching the Brazilian version of the circle or Love is Blind. So now that we've covered those two genres, let's look at a few that might not be as good for learning. First off, we have period dramas. Period dramas might be your shit, which means you might really, really like them, but they're not the most practical. I'm talking shows like Downton Abbey, The Gilded Age, Bridgerton, etc. Obviously, the big problem with them is that they use archaic grammar and sentence structure, so grammar and sentences that just aren't used outside of that universe. They're also full of really formal structures that you would never use, as well as vocabulary that you won't find anywhere else. Like nobody is out there saying, it would greatly please me if you were to reconsider, or I fear I have offended you with my candor. Look, it's not wrong, but nobody talks like that. The vocabulary is also pretty irrelevant to you, most likely. Things like ladyship, viscount, courting are just not really useful to you. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. You'll also find really long poetic sentences that you just don't need to ever know. And while they are elegant and beautifully written and masterfully recited, they're just so useless when it comes to normal day-to-day communication. I think the language is way too literary for you to actually be getting anything from it outside of the artistry of the phrase or sentence itself. Also, the accents you find in period dramas are not ones you'll come across in the real world. There are a lot of exaggerated accents and exaggerated instances of pronunciation which aren't really gonna help you sound natural. So, in my opinion, when it comes to using series or TV shows as a learning tool, they're probably not the best use of your time. The same goes for some sci-fi or science fiction and fantasy series. Here, the same principles apply. While they may be some of your favorite shows, they're not the most practical. You're never going to say the prophecy foretold this moment, or she carries the blood of the ancient realm. You know what I mean? Does this does this make sense? The stories are incredible and the universes they create are amazing, or the worlds they create are amazing, but you don't need to know how to say the quantum shield is destabilizing the interlink. Okay. I think I've made my point. I just really wanted to say those ridiculous things. There are other types of shows that might not be the best for English learning, like medical shows like House or Grey's Anatomy, or law-related shows like Suits, although they might be really fun, they're so full of field-specific language that it kind of fries your brain and tires you out. You're paying so much attention that it becomes a bit unsustainable. If you're someone who does learn a lot watching these types of shows, then more power to you. But I think I'm going to advise against it. Obviously, if you're a doctor or a lawyer or a business tycoon and you have incredible English, then disregard what I'm saying. But that's why I said that thing at the beginning of the episode. I can't give you tailor-made advice. Tailor-made is a cool phrase, by the way, it means a medida. A tailor is un sastre. So if something is tailor-made, then it's echo amerida. Okay, let's talk about subtitles now. I've been getting a lot of questions about subtitles and what people should be doing. Luckily, there's research about this exact topic when it comes to language learning, so we're going to go through it real quick and get to some conclusions. Should you use Spanish subtitles, English subtitles, no subtitles? I think the answer is pretty simple. It depends on your level. I know it's a boring answer, but it's what the data suggests. If you're a beginner or a lower intermediate, use Spanish subtitles and stop feeling guilty about it. I feel like there's this weird shame, a weird shame among learners, like if you use subtitles in your own language, you're failing or something. But I think that's a bit harsh, and I don't want you to be so hard on yourself. If something is harsh, it's drastic or severe. So first I just want to get that out of your head. Well, it's actually like more than 20 studies, that found that having subtitles even in your native language significantly improves comprehension and vocabulary retention because your brain finally understands what the hell is happening in the story, and when your brain understands, you stay engaged, which is half the battle. If you feel like this applies to you, to where you are in your English journey, so to speak, just go with that. Your job is to survive and get through the episode, and the victory is just not quitting. If you feel like subtitles in Spanish are your safety net, then that's cool. Now, if you're a solid intermediate, then I recommend you switch to English subtitles because this is really where the learning happens. There's a classic study by Byrd and Williams from 2002 that showed that listening to English while reading English subtitles activates two processing systems in the brain at the same time. Audio and visual. I've talked about it before, but we call this dual coding. And it really, really, really helps with retention. Three reeleys. There are also other studies like the Markham study from 1999 and more recent ones conducted from 2020 to 2023 that found that English captions improve listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, accent recognition, and speech segmentation, which is basically like feeling where words start and end. This basically means that English subtitles give your brain like a map, entre comillas, of what you're hearing. Most of your progress happens in this area. So stick with it, you're doing great. And finally, if you're advanced, then I think you should challenge yourself. Turn off the subtitles from time to time. You don't have to make any final decisions, but you can challenge yourself once in a while. Don't watch everything without subtitles all the time because that's a bit extreme. And when you're feeling good, when you're feeling confident, go for it. Do it strategically, is what I'm saying. Play around and see how you feel. Here's a solid strategic way to go about it. I never want to hear estrategic, which I've heard way too many times in my life. So here's a solid strategic way to go about it. And to go about it means like to approach it. So here's how I would go about it. So try this out. Watch something with English subtitles first, so your brain catches the vocabulary and structure without burning too much energy. Then re-watch the same scene or the same episode without subtitles to really feel that burn or to feel that work happening. This isn't my method, by the way. This is a proven method that is backed, respaldado, that is backed by multiple studies on something we call input scaffolding. Scaffolding is that thing you see around buildings that are undergoing renovation, like andamios or andamiaje in the educational sense. Basically, the idea behind input scaffolding is that your brain learns best when you gradually remove support. I like to think about it like training wheels on a bike or bumpers when you go bowling with kids and you don't want them to really get demoralized when they inevitably throw the ball directly into the gutter. You know, I like my gym metaphors, so you can think about it like starting a movement with lower weight until you get used to it, and then you really know how to drive some power into it. And again, this does not have to be a big decision. You can just do it once in a while, see how you feel, and just try to test yourself with different types of shows or movies. This also works really well with movies or episodes that you already know really well. I feel like I could watch The Office in Japanese and learn a good amount of expressions or vocabulary because I've re-watched it like 20 times and I know a lot of the dialogue by heart, the memoria by heart. So I hope that clears up any questions you have on the whole subtitle debate. I want you to figure out which of these groups you belong to and apply what we've been talking about. If you're somewhere in between these groups, which I'm sure might be the case for a lot of you, don't freak out. Try the indications for one group one day and the indications for the other group on a different day. Maybe calibrate depending on how tired you are that day or how ambitious or confident you're feeling. And if you're in the group of people that watches with Spanish subtitles, even though your English level and comprehension would probably allow you to switch them to English, please, please, please don't hesitate to try it. I know it's uncomfortable, but it'll get better. It just it can't not get better. It might take you a bit longer than other people, and that's fine. But it's that feeling of discomfort which is super important. Don't get discouraged if you understand more on a Sunday than you do on a Tuesday. That's part of the process. Measure it by weeks or months, okay, not by days, and stay patient. This leads me to the last point I want to talk about. Pressure. The pressure we often put on ourselves when it comes to learning a language or just getting better at anything, really. I think you're better off, I think you're better off accepting that some days we'll be better than others and giving yourself a break from your constant demands than expecting improvements from every session. If you catch yourself thinking, ugh, I should be better by now, or man, my English really isn't where it should be, try to build an alternative narrative in your head. I know it seems like I go on and on about this alternative narrative thing, como que no me cayó, I go on and on about it, but I really believe in this. Life is hard enough, you don't need to be your biggest critic. I'm a firm believer that this kills the process, and I want you to enjoy the process because in the long run, a la larga, in the long run, that's what gets you to where you want to be. Also, there are studies, and you know I love studies, there are studies that show that pressure hijacks or disrupts or hinders your working memory. It actually interferes with your cognitive processing. I think we romanticize this idea of pressuring yourself and driving yourself until you reach your goal. And while it works for some people some of the time, it definitely does not work for everyone all of the time. Don't treat English as an like asignatura pendiente, and don't approach your learning as this insecurity that you desperately need to correct. Try to stay curious, and when you feel that frustration building, remember this moment right now and tell yourself you're doing a good job. Be nice to yourself, I guess, is what I'm saying. And enjoy the ride. Alright, that's it for this episode of English with Dane. I hope you liked it, and I hope you got something from it. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. I'd really appreciate that. And if you haven't already, follow the show on Spotify and give it a five star rating. We passed 1,000 reviews already, and even though I'm not entirely sure what that does, it does help me feel like we're building something positive, and that just makes me really happy. Alright, talk soon. Have a great week. Later.