How to Understand English TV Without Subtitles | Step-by-Step

Have you ever felt like watching an English TV show is similar to

trying to put a puzzle together without all the pieces?

Fast dialogues, tricky slang,

unfamiliar accents can turn something that's supposed to be fun and relaxing

into something that's challenging,

maybe even so frustrating that you simply want to give up.

You're tired of watching English TV shows and needing subtitles

before you go that far. Before you give up, I've got a better way.

In this confident English lesson today,

you're going to get a step by step method to follow complex

storylines and catch fast dialogue without subtitles.

Now to be clear,

mastering your English with TV isn't a quick fix.

This is definitely more of a journey,

but the actionable steps that you're going to learn here today will put you on

the right path to watching your favorite English TV shows in

English without subtitles.

You'll also learn how to embrace different accents, idioms,

and expressions at your own pace. Then at the end,

if you wanna get my top recommendations for TV shows to start with,

I'll tell you how you can get those.

But before we go any further, if this is your first time here, welcome.

I'm Annemarie, an English confidence and fluency coach.

Everything I do is designed to help you get the confidence you want for your

life and work in English.

If you'd love to discover years of free lessons for me,

just like this lesson and get my free in depth fluency training called

How to Get the Confidence to Say What You Want in English,

you can find all of that and more over at my Speak Confident English website.

In a moment, we're going to jump right into step number one,

but I want to take a moment to acknowledge all of the different factors

that contribute to challenges and frustrations when learning to

understand English TV shows.

I know that you're likely familiar with many of these already,

so I'm not going to talk about each one,

but here's a starting list of all of the contributing factors,

speed and style of speech, accents and dialect, background noise,

colloquial and idiomatic language,

multiple speakers and overlapping dialogue,

character traits and video editing just to name a few. Again,

I'm certain you're familiar with several of these,

but there are two that I want to touch on briefly. First,

accents and dialects.

English TV shows feature a range of accents and dialects,

which is honestly fantastic because it reflects reality.

There is a world of English accents and dialects. However,

if you're watching a TV show and hearing an accent or dialect

for the first time, it can be a challenge to understand it initially,

and that's okay. What you learn here today is going to help you move forward.

The second one I want to touch on is character traits.

There are characters and dialogues in which someone is intentionally speaking

in a way that is hard to understand. In fact,

there are times that I turn on the captions or subtitles when I'm watching an

English TV show. For example, if a character is mumbling,

mumbling is when someone speaks really quietly and they don't pronounce all

their words clearly. This is super hard to understand. In addition,

there may be a character speaking excessively fast, fast beyond normal,

and this might be part of their personality trait as a character

or due to some situation. For example,

maybe in the scene someone is panicking so they're speaking super fast to

help illustrate the emotion of the moment or maybe it's for comedic effect.

These different styles of speaking can be a challenge for anyone

no matter what is contributing to the difficulties you're experiencing right now

in watching English TV shows,

these next steps will help you overcome them so you can enjoy watching

your favorite TV and do it in English. Step number one,

choose the right TV show.

If you're just beginning a practice in watching English TV shows and you're

working to understand,

I recommend that you start with a show that has a clear,

easy to follow storyline and always focus on a genre

that interests you, something that you're excited to watch.

Nobody wants to watch boring tv and as you'll see in a moment,

you're going to watch some segments of these TV shows more

than once, so I want it to be a show that you really enjoy. On top of that,

once you've started to think about a TV show,

I recommend that you set an intention or goal. For example,

if you're working to understand a particular accent,

then you might choose a TV show from that region or country

or if you want to better understand fast English speakers,

choose a TV show that features a character or two that is known to

speak quite fast. Before you even begin watching,

I want you to take time to do some research,

read some online articles or listen to podcasts about the TV show,

maybe the entire series and if possible,

the specific episode you're going to watch.

Doing this has multiple benefits. Number one,

it gives you contextual understanding.

What this means is it helps you to understand the storyline, what's going on,

who's involved, so you have a clear picture before you watch.

It's like giving someone a map before they go on a journey.

The second benefit is vocabulary preparation.

Rather than be surprised by every word used in the episode,

taking some time to do some research can give you a sneak peek

into the vocabulary and phrases you're likely to hear.

I like to think that this is similar to warming up before you work out,

before you go on a run, it warms up your language learning muscles.

The third benefit here is it helps with focused attention.

If you're watching a TV show and you don't know anything about it,

you have to take in multiple pieces of information.

If you do some research in advance,

rather than trying to figure out what's happening in this episode,

you can simply focus on how are they saying it, what are they saying?

Your attention is focused on the language, not the storyline,

and finally, predictive listening.

Knowing what comes next in the story allows you to anticipate what the

characters might say. Making it easier to understand fast dialogue.

It's a little bit like knowing the lyrics to a song.

It's so much easier to sing along when you know what's coming next.

Step number three is to watch in segments. In other words,

if the TV show is 30 minutes long,

maybe only focus on the first 10 minutes or 15 minutes for

your practice that day. Doing this,

especially if you're just starting out in your practice,

makes it easier to commit to your practice consistently and

it helps you to stay focused for a limited period of time without getting too

tired or overwhelmed. Now,

this next thing I'm going to say might surprise you a little bit.

Once you're ready to watch your selected segment, I want you to go ahead,

click play,

and turn on subtitles in your native language. Yes,

that's right. I said turn on subtitles in your native language.

It's totally okay to do this,

especially if you're just starting out in learning to understand English

dialogue in TV shows. Just like doing research before you watch,

taking some time to watch with subtitles in your own language allows you to

focus initially on the overall storyline. What is happening,

who's doing what, what's going on.

Having that understanding will make it easier for you when you switch to

English subtitles or no subtitles to understand the English dialogue,

you can put all your attention just on that. In fact,

that's exactly what you can do next. After you've watched the first segment,

perhaps 10 minutes with subtitles in your native language,

I want you to go back, watch again, click play,

but this time use subtitles in English.

Doing this will help you connect what is written with what is spoken,

reinforcing your understanding of the vocabulary and pronunciation.

Step number four is pause and reflect.

You can do this as much as or as little as you need while watching

a particular segment.

Whether you need to go back to try to catch something that was said during a

fast exchange or perhaps there was an expression you heard that you really want

to hear again, maybe a new vocabulary word,

you can always pause and take a moment to reflect even better.

You can write down notes or track vocabulary in a notebook.

I know in my own language learning practice,

I found it particularly helpful to have a dedicated notebook just for

vocabulary.

I was learning while watching TV shows and I kept it right next to my sofa so

it was always ready when I needed it. Step number five is summarize.

Once you've hit your 10 or 15 minute mark, I want you to stop.

Take a moment to write down a few notes. What did you observe?

What did you learn?

What was the storyline and what were some of the key phrases or expressions in

English that you heard?

And then I want you to summarize what happened in that 10 or 15 minute

segment out loud. I want you to talk about it out loud.

You can do this with someone else if you want to,

or you can do it by yourself and record your voice.

This process of summarizing does four key things. Number one,

it reinforces your understanding. In other words,

it solidifies what you've learned,

helping the dialogues and the plot to stick in your memory.

Number two, it tests your comprehension.

If you can summarize what you've watched,

then you've understood what was happening. However,

if you're struggling to summarize,

it may be an indicator that there were some big gaps in understanding,

so it might be necessary to go back and watch the segment again before

you summarize. Number three, it enhances your vocabulary.

When you summarize, you're actively using the vocabulary, the phrases,

the expressions you heard in that TV show.

This means that you're actively using the new vocabulary rather than just

passively learning it through listening.

It also helps you to get comfortable expressing your ideas with this language.

And lastly, it's a great way to track your progress.

If you do this regularly,

you'll start to notice that it's easier to understand and quickly summarize

complex dialogues or easier to incorporate new vocabulary into your

summaries. Once you've completed this particular step,

you've finished your first watching experience. Now,

you can do all of this at one time and have about a 30 to 40 minute

practice session that includes maybe 10 minutes to do a bit of research.

On the episode.

You're going to watch 10 minutes to watch a segment with subtitles in your

native language if you need it,

another 10 minutes to watch again with English subtitles and maybe 10 minutes to

do a summary. You could also choose to split this up over a period of days.

Maybe on one day you do the research on a second day,

you watch the segments twice, and on a third you do your summary.

Either way, you're getting consistent practice over time.

Once you've done all that, then it's simply rinse and repeat.

Complete that same cycle again until you've finished an entire episode,

not the entire series, but one single episode.

When you finished an entire episode. It's time for step six recap.

Just like with summarizing the individual segments that you've watched,

recapping an episode allows you to test your comprehension,

reuse that core vocabulary, and track your progress over time.

If you want to go further,

you could also find a friend or an online learning community like my Confident

Women community to discuss the episode with others. And then finally,

step number seven, no subtitles.

After you've gone through those first six steps,

I want you to watch the episode again,

and this time watch it in English with no subtitles.

If you've followed all the previous steps,

you have all the pieces you need to complete the puzzle.

Any vocabulary that may have been particularly difficult at the beginning will

now be much easier to understand,

and the same is true with fast dialogues or unfamiliar accents.

This process will effectively and efficiently help you understand

English and TV shows, and ultimately, as you continue your practice,

you won't need to complete each one of these steps Over time.

You might find that you no longer need to watch with subtitles in your native

language. You just go directly to the English subtitles, and then again,

as you continue, at some point, you won't need them at all. For example,

many TV shows have multiple seasons.

You might find season one takes you a little bit more time,

but then by the time you're ready for season two,

you really don't need those subtitles. You can just watch it and have fun,

and that is the ultimate goal. Now,

if you want my top recommendations for TV shows to start with,

I want you to do one thing.

I want you to hop over to my Speak Confident English website where I have this

lesson provided,

and I have a list of English TV shows I recommend starting with and

why they are great choices.

You can find a link to this lesson in the description below the video.

With that, thank you so much for joining me today.

I hope that you found this helpful. Also,

if you have a favorite TV show that you've loved watching in English,

share what it is down below.

Perhaps you have a TV show that someone else in the Speak Confident English

community would love to watch. Now, if you enjoyed this,

I would love to know. You can tell me in a very simple way.

Simply give this lesson a thumbs up here on YouTube, and while you're at it,

make sure you subscribe to my Speak Confident English Channel so you never miss

one of my Confident English lessons. Thanks again,

and I look forward to seeing you next time.