Tips & Tricks: Dealing With Phrases That Elude Our Understanding

Home alone or hanging with friends, watching movies is a lovely way to entertain yourself. Most of the times they speak in a foreign language, and that challenges your attention, listening skills and vocabulary. We’d love to share with you some simple wizardry on that.

Magic Trick #1: Captions

Let’s be honest – movies without subtitles are completely understood only by native speakers. If English, Spanish, French, Italian, German (or whatever language the movie comes in) is not your mother tongue, you’d better see it with subtitles. On the other hand, reading subtitles in your own language can be really hazardous as you lean on the translator’s knowledge and common sense about language. So, the golden mean would be using subtitles in the original language of the movie. Why do that?

1. Your ears hear the way the unfamiliar words are pronounced.
2. Your eyes see how they are written.
3. Your brain remembers this verbal-textual synthesis.

Magic Trick #2: Snapshots

Snapshots are a nice and easy way to capture your screen while you are watching a movie. If you are a VLC user for instance, the key shortcut would be Ctrl+Alt+S. What is more, you don’t need to pause the movie to do this. Use snapshots each time you come across unfamiliar words or extraordinary phrases. If you don’t understand how they translate from the context, you will be able to check them out (and potentially learn them) later, once your movie is over.

Magic Trick #3: Exclusive Photo Library

Snapshots are not only worth it for the above reason. They help you save some keywords and remarkable scenes from the movies you love. A photo of a silver-tongued saying would remind you of the movie’s plotline and main idea. Plus, it is really cool to share it on the social networks and recommend the movie to your friends. It keeps your memories vivid!