Watching reality TV is a great way to learn a language
What if I told you that you can improve your conversational skills in your target language by watching dumb reality TV? Yes, you read that right: there is value in trash television when it’s in another language than your native tongue. I will show you how with just a few easy tips. Trust me, I’m fluent in 3 and I have used these tips my entire life to keep up with my Spanish, Mongolian, French, and even English when I’m confronted with British slang, etc.
Now, I’m not a fan of reality TV per se. As a native English speaker, shows like Keeping Up With the Kardashians just don’t stimulate me enough BUT when you don’t live in the country of your target language, reality TV is really the next best thing to being a fly on a wall around native speakers. All the rejoinders, colloquialisms, and speech acts you’ll ever need in daily conversations are right there! You just have to be a keen observer and know what to look out for. That’s where I come in 😀
I have recently stumbled upon the wonderful world of Love Is Blind and I am obsessed. You guys know I love Arabic language and music, so it was only natural that I picked Love Is Blind: Habibi to watch. Though I only know no more than ten words, I couldn’t help but make a whole language learning experience from it. Then it hit me: Hey, maybe this thing I am doing could be fun for others.
1. Have a sketch pad ready.
No, not a notepad with lines or dots. Unlined and undotted paper is best because you can doodle and jot down whatever you think you hear in a messy and liberated way. You’re not gonna be writing things down right away, so don’t worry about being ready to write either. Simply listen, watch, and immerse yourself into the silly drama you see unfold before you. Eventually, you’ll start seeing patterns.
2. Keep subtitles on in your native language but listen carefully.
You will learn to listen intently and read the subtitles. Every time they say “No way!” in the subtitles, do you hear more or less the same expression? Rejoinders are quick spontaneous responses that we have. In English we might say “Right!” or “Not really” or “I know right!” Paris Hilton famously used to say “That’s hot” back in the 2000s. Yep, those are all rejoinders. They’re super basic, but don’t let that fool you.
Rejoinders are super important in building confidence during conversations.
Think about it: you might not know what is exactly being said in the conversation, but you might be able to detect when to say “right” or “not really” or “I know right!” to make it sound like you are listening. We do this in boring work meetings a lot, right? Well, if you can detect these in your target language and use them effectively, it will boost your confidence because you’ll learn that you can get by and still look cool 😎
You’re not gonna be picking up on rejoinders right away especially if it’s your first time doing this exercise. It might take you a couple of episodes to start picking up on patterns. That’s when you’ll start jotting stuff down. Don’t go and start using your phone to translate. It’s super stimulating for the brain and fun for you if you make this a game of deciphering with context clues. The phone can help you confirm later.
3. Make some notes, but keep it meaningful.
Don’t worry about the words being misspelled or not quite right. The idea here is to jot down whatever your brain absorbed, brain to paper, as intuitively as you can. Perfection is the enemy of the language learner, so don’t ideas of correct spelling or having many words hold you back from having fun with this linguistic journey. Quality over quantity. Write down words that really speak to you.
When you write them down, write down an equivalent in English. For example, when I was watching LOVE IS BLIND: HABIBI I began to notice everyone said “ya’ani” a lot. Almost like a crutch word. Resisting the urge to pick up my phone to look it up, I wrote down “ya’ani = I mean?” in my notebook and then waited a few more episodes to see how it was used.
4. Play around with the new words and phrases.
Did you learn to say something cool? Say it. Write it down. Pretend you are Robert De Niro in front of the mirror in Taxi Driver and get comfortable saying these foreign words and making them your own. If you’re keen, you might even write down a few sentences that express your real feelings about something. How much you love your spouse or how you don’t want to do the dishes. The realer the better.
Rinse and repeat. It’s that easy.
By the way, it doesn’t matter what level you are in your target language, you can still do this exercise, enjoy it, and learn something. In my case, I know maybe ten words in Arabic and don’t understand the first thing about its grammar. I don’t even study it very seriously because French is currently my priority, but I do like to dabble in Arabic for the sake of tickling my brain. Arabic is for pure pleasure.
For example, I watched all ten episodes of LOVE IS BLIND: HABIBI with English subtitles on and what I could decipher from TEN episodes was no more than one page of rejoinders. I’m not even at the level of understanding full sentences much less expressions so I didn’t bother with those. Learning to react in a language by using rejoinders is as important as learning to speak. Don’t let its simplicity fool you.
If your target language has a different writing system and you’re not quite confident in it yet, exercise your ear anyway and write down what you hear in the alphabet you know. In my case, I’m still a beginner with Arabic letters so I just wrote down everything just as I heard it in our Roman alphabet. If you’re learning Mandarin, pinyin will do just fine. We just have to dedicate time apart to practice the writing 😇
Don’t bite off more than you can chew.
On the other hand, I’m a native Spanish speaker, but Spanish is probably at middle school level because 1) I left Mexico when I was 8 and 2) I grew up in the United States. At best I’m probably a B2 in Spanish. I lack a lot of the eloquent phrasing and rich vocabulary that a Mexican citizen at 33 years of age should have. This is where LOVE IS BLIND: MEXICO comes in.
That’s it. Simply rinse and repeat until things start clicking.
All the passive listening and random note-taking like this will eventually pay-off especially if you’re taking weekly lessons with a teacher. My advice to my students is to never forget that language learning should spark the kind of awe and wonder that we used to have as kids when we went treasure hunting or found a secret code to decipher. That’s the magic.
All the grammar rules, books, exercises, and the pressure to be “fluent” sometimes have us forgetting that learning a language is meant to be fun and a way for us to love, fight, gossip (much like we see done in those reality TV shows). Reality TV might not be the most high brow form of entertainment, but as far as language learning goes, it is a student’s best kept secret.
I’m happy to answer any questions related to learning languages in the comments, so feel free to ask. This is my bread and butter 💗
⭐ OTHER NETFLIX MENA STUFF I HAVE COVERED ⭐
