Today I want to tell you about a useful tool for foreign language learners – the Apple TV app and service.
It can be especially useful for those studying English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, German, or Portuguese.
Though it will also be helpful for those learning a number of other languages.
The main purpose of Apple TV is watching movies and TV shows.
And this directly concerns us, since one of the components you need to master when learning a language is listening comprehension.
Moreover, for me personally, this is perhaps the most difficult part of mastering any language.
What can Apple TV offer us?
A collection of movies and TV shows with audio in English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Portuguese.
We engage in something pleasant and get benefits at the same time.
Since I’ve returned to studying Japanese, I will now regularly watch movies and TV shows in Japanese using Apple TV.
Yesterday, for example, I started watching the movie Wolfs.
And by the way, as I wrote above, this service can also be useful for those learning other languages, but not for improving listening comprehension.
The thing is, besides switching audio languages, Apple TV allows you to switch subtitles to various languages. And there are usually many more subtitle languages than audio languages.
For example, for the movie Wolfs, you can choose from this list: English (CC, SDH), Arabic (SDH), Bulgarian (SDH), Cantonese, Traditional (SDH), Chinese, Simplified (SDH), Chinese, Traditional (SDH), Czech (SDH), Danish (SDH), Dutch (SDH), Estonian (SDH), Finnish (SDH), French (Canada) (SDH), French (France) (SDH), German (SDH), Greek (SDH), Hebrew (SDH), Hindi (SDH), Hungarian (SDH), Indonesian (SDH), Italian (SDH), Japanese (SDH), Korean (SDH), Latvian (SDH), Lithuanian (SDH), Malay (SDH), Norwegian (SDH), Polish (SDH), Portuguese (SDH), Portuguese (Brazil) (SDH), Russian (SDH), Slovak (SDH), Slovenian (SDH), Spanish (Latin America) (SDH), Spanish (Spain) (SDH), Swedish (SDH), Tamil (SDH), Telugu (SDH), Thai (SDH), Turkish (SDH), Ukrainian (SDH), Vietnamese (SDH).
I haven’t tried doing this yet, but someday I’ll try experimenting with watching without sound but with subtitles turned on in the language I’m studying. I don’t know how much I’ll like it, but it’s a good idea for an experiment.
You can use the Apple TV service through a web browser or with an app for iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS.
Happy viewing!
What do you use for watching movies and TV shows?