why all the drama?

As detailed in my previous post, after trying several different ways to learn Chinese spread out over a millenia, I settled on and stuck with the TV method. That's right, I stuck with something. Even without having any evidence of whether it would work or not, I enjoyed it and kept going. I made a commitment to watch 2,000 hours of Chinese.

I never set any expectations for what I might achieve in 2,000 hours, so I was certainly not disappointed. One reason for taking up the challenge was just to show that it can be done. Yes, you can learn a language just by watching TV. In fact, I still am! I have a ways to go before I get to understanding 100% and I'll let you know when I get there. In the meantime, I'm slowly accumulating more hours of watching TV in Chinese.

All of my time has been spent on TV dramas. But why? Well, it was not a decision, nor even a focus on dramas. It was just that it was the easiest thing to find. Once I find a drama to watch, I'm all set for 16 to 30 hours. Choosing the next thing to watch takes time. If I had used cable TV, I'd have been spending a lot of time finding a good channel with something good on. There also were not any reliable TV broadcasts on the internet when I started. So that's why I started buying dramas. But nowadays, things are different. There are several good sites for Chinese TV programming, and the streaming is getting better and better all the time. I recommend tv.sohu.com.

Other excellent types of TV content, as Bakunin has shared with us, are instructional videos and children's programming. You would probably need some help to find those, unless you can read Chinese. But if you can read Chinese then you probably aren't looking to learn the language. I can't read Chinese either. I can recognize some characters that are used in Japanese, but I can't read the description of anything. I'm just like a kid. I have to choose what to watch based on the cover picture.

One of the good things about learning from authentic content like this, is that I am never shocked. Classroom learners or those using learner content never get used to watching TV in the target language. It's just too discouraging to realize that you can't understand the real language yet. However, using the TV method, I never noticed a sudden difference in the difficulty level. There's no sudden jump. I just gradually understand more and more. And when I look back, I realize that I am improving.

Now if only I could retire so I could devote more time to watching TV. I mean, learning languages.

breaking the silence

Here it is! My first time to speak after an extended silent period.
I'll refrain from criticizing myself and let you all criticize me instead.

Of course, I've kept my promise to record the first conversation. I will record more when I can.  This video is what I call a language time capsule. I'd like to thank Rony Gao again for allowing me to record and upload my very first Chinese conversation. You'll be seeing him again. I should also mention he is a tutor at LingQ.

Yes, LingQ saved the day! I could not find many new contacts on Skype. The search function of Skype has become useless for finding new friends, as you cannot limit it to online people only. I sent out a bunch of hellos, and all of them went "pending..." because the people in the results list were not online even though I set my search function to search for people in SkypeMe mode. In fact, I learned that Skype has recently removed SkypeMe from it's PC version.

The reviews are already pouring in on YouTube (sort of.) I look forward to someone bashing me and telling me they aren't impressed. I haven't put this video up to impress anybody. It just says this is where I am on January 24, 2011 with my Chinese. Let's see what the next few months bring. Happy New Year!

the TV method answers

The following are answers to the questions from my previous post, two thousand hours. I'm glad to see there are still some people interested in the TV method. Thanks to all my readers, especially those who left a comment or question.

The first set of questions came from William.

• How well do you feel that you understand dialog in TV shows?

two thousand hours

I have just completed 2000 hours of watching TV in Chinese. Hip hip hooray!

This completes my 2000 hour silent period, and I now give myself permission to speak Chinese freely. Except for one restriction! I will not speak until I'm ready (haha). That is, not until I am ready to record my first Chinese conversation with a native speaker.  Hopefully that will be sooner than later.  I wouldn't want to cheat anybody by having a warm-up period, that is, getting a little practice off camera. No, I just want to record my very first real conversation.  And hopefully when it's done, we'll be able to call it a conversation too.

I'm curious to see how I sound speaking Chinese and if I've learned any useful words or phrases from all these dramas I've watched.

boy learns 2 languages watching TV

A HTLAL forum member from Azerbaijan claims to have learned 2 languages from watching TV. Original post here: Learning Turkish and Russian from TV. It is the 4th post on the 4th page (maybe some significance?), marked as message 28. His username on the forum is vusalgustav. He seems to be quite a polyglot.

I will reprint the post below:

800 hours TV method Chinese

I am writing this post to mark the point of 800 hours viewing Chinese TV dramas. All this means is that I have watched eight hundred hours of made-for-TV dramas in the Chinese Mandarin language.

And is it working? Yes, I am increasingly getting better at following the language and understanding more and more of what is actually being said. I am picking up more vocabulary as well.

Where was I a year ago? Well, let's see...

natural language learning

I decided to talk about my preferred learning style for languages. I spent 5 hours on this 17 minute video. I had to edit out all the pauses. In the first part, I mostly talked about ALG and Dr. Brown's background teaching Thai.

This is not a prepared presentation, so there are some parts that I should have expanded on and there are some parts I should have clarified better.  Also, I did not conclude the video properly.  I decided to stop talking when I realized I had used almost 3 GB on my hard drive while recording.

My speech goes rather slowly, so I hope you don't fall asleep. It's probably good for those learning English. I created a playlist for the two parts so the second part could start right after the first and be viewed in the same player.

I hope you enjoy the talk.




Link to the playlist.

the TV method!

Here is my first attempt to try to describe the TV method in a video. I want to get better at talking about second language acquisition and language learning like Steve Kaufmann. Some of my thoughts may not be well connected or well said, so please forgive me. This was my first time speaking about the TV method. I was not able to cover everything in 10 minutes. I actually spoke for about 13 minutes, but I cut off the end so I wouldn't need more than one video. I also cut out a few seconds where it took me time to recall the word "unproven" in the beginning of the video. The rest is uncut. I hope you enjoy my very first video about the TV method.

an interview with Charith in English

I got the captioning done today for the interview with Charith in English and uploaded it to YouTube. This video is 8 minutes long.

For those who've somehow landed on this page and don't know who Charith is I will give you a simple explanation. Charith is from Sri Lanka and he is fluent in Japanese. I've posted 2 other videos of him speaking Japanese already. So if you are looking for examples of foreigners who are fluent in Japanese, Charith is one such example.

Yes, it is my desire to bring hope and encouragement to those who are studying Japanese or any language. You too can become fluent in Japanese! You can become fluent in English or Chinese too. You can become fluent in whatever language you want and however many languages you want to be fluent in.

And when I say "fluent," I have high standards. So if you needn't worry that Charith might not be as good at Japanese as I say he is. You can see for yourself. Just go to my youtube channel and search for Charith.

tips for learning Japanese

Here is the second video with Charith. After we had finished the first interview he had some more he wanted to say. At first he starts talking about watching TV even when you don't understand any of it, and about not using a dictionary. He says that the words will enter you and you will acquire them naturally. But then he goes on to give some more tips and advice. At the end of the 5 minute video I have provided a list of the points he makes. I put the list up in Japanese and in English. You can just hit the pause button to read the list.

I have also subtitled this video, in Japanese and in English. Go to the YouTube site to get the subtitle functionality. You can turn it on or off in the lower right corner of the player. It is called 'CC' for closed captioning. I think this will be the last time I try to subtitle a Japanese video. It takes too much time. But since I figured many people here who don't learn Japanese will want to watch the video and know what he says, I subtitled this one. After writing all the Japanese down, creating the English translated subtitle file is easy. It's just the Japanese part that is difficult because I have to keep listening to parts over and over trying to catch the exact words used.

What's interesting about that is that I will have a part already transcribed and I'm trying to hear what is said after that part, and so I rewind and listen to it again but my mind gets stuck on what is being said and when the part I'm supposed to be listening for comes along, I miss it because my mind was preoccupied. That can happen like 3 or 4 times in a row!

Tips for Learning Japanese from Charith

Japanese interview with Charith

I have finally got the first interview with Charith ready. It is late because I decided to create subtitles for the video. I can only do so much typing at once. And then there was that day that I lost 2 hours of work on the subtitles.

This interview is in Japanese. I have made Japanese subtitles and also English subtitles. You may have to turn them on and you may have to select the one you want to appear. That control is in the lower right corner of the video player. If it's not available on the embeded player in this post, then go to youtube to watch it: The Video link.

There will be two more videos to come. I have to make subtitle files for them before I post them. I don't know why, though. I just feel like providing them.

About Charith: He came to Japan 6 months before I arrived. He went to a Japanese language school for 18 months and then to a technical college to study computers. Those classes were, of course, conducted in Japanese.

beginning to watch Japanese TV

I am beginning to watch TV in Japanese now. I've started with DVDs. I watched over 6 hours on Saturday and I made a new YouTube video in Japanese last night. We'll be able to see how much change there is over time. It depends on just how much watching or listening I do.

If you want to see what I have done since I spoke to Steve, you can look at my Google document here. I will put this link on the right side of the blog as well. This document is formatted differently than my document for the TV method for Chinese. I have added any significant speaking events to it.

I remembered recently that I can go to the library and check out 2 DVDs there. There's not really a very good selection at the library. There are no TV dramas there. They have more foreign films than they do Japanese ones. I would expect there to be more NHK documentaries and such than what is available now. I think the main problem with the library is that they have many branches throughout the town and so the collection is split up.

There is a series called 日本の巨匠, which means Japan's Masters. I think there were 50 discs with about 1 hour each. Each disc has 4 episodes of this series. Each episode is about a master painter, artist, craftsman, etc. It's not dialogue like a usual conversation. There is some narration and there is the master telling his or her story including pictures of their works. It seems they started this series about 30 years ago, or during the 1980s. Each person has something they want to tell to the people of the next century (21st). It's not super exciting, but I'm going to try watching through all of it. I watched the first 2 discs yesterday, and today I checked out the 3rd disc.

There's a 2-disc check out limit at the library. The other disc I checked out today is called bluestockings in English, but the actual title is 自由恋愛 by Masato Harada. It's some kind of love story. It looks like the disc has some extras on it.

The discs from the library have something attached to them that they call an IC tab. I guess it's to make the alarm sound if you try to sneak the disc out of the library. Friday, I put the first one into my Mac Mini before reading the warning not to put the discs into a slot loading DVD player. My computer was OK, but I guess I'd better not take any chances, so I'll just use my portable DVD player to watch these.

need your help to decide!

In continuation of the previous post, I have to decide what to do about my Chinese acquisition during this period of concentration on Japanese. What do you think I should do? Here are the options that I am able to come up with right now.

Option A) Stop watching Chinese TV completely. We don't know how long it will be until I will be able to return my focus to Chinese acquisition. Until then, I could forget about the Chinese language and we'll use it as an experiment to see what happens. Will the Chinese language continue to grow inside my head during a period of non-contact? Or will it remain about the same? If my absence from the language is 3 months or more then this could become a significant test. If I don't choose this option, am I being negligent in my responsibility to find a new job which will most likely require good Japanese language ability?

Option B) Watch Chinese TV only when I can't watch Japanese TV. Because I don't have any DVDs or video files in the Japanese language, I could choose to watch Chinese when I am not at home by bringing my portable DVD player (PLAID) with me wherever I go. I do not have a one-seg capable mobile phone either. If I did have such a phone, then I could watch Japanese on the go. But I don't know if I'll be getting one or not. So this option is to keep in contact with the Chinese language but not at the expense of the Japanese language. This is the option one would choose if worried about language atrophy.

Option C) Forget about Japanese and just watch Chinese. Should I get a job where Japanese isn't required so I can focus on Chinese? Maybe I could find an ALT job where I could help students continue the wrong way to learn a language. If I am unemployed long enough, I'll have to consider just about anything.

If you have any other options for me to consider, please let me know. Otherwise, please leave a comment telling me which one to choose. I will have to spend a lot of time job searching and exhausting all avenues of possible employment. But usually there comes a point when you don't know where else to look or what else to do. Then I will have a lot of time available. Time which could be spent on language acquisition!

TV method switching channels

Here's big news from the TV method blog.

As you know, I have watched 549 hours of TV in Chinese. Lately I have been able to maintain a pace of 120+ viewing hours per month. Unfortunately, this has to change, starting now. I have to change focus from Chinese to Japanese and I won't likely break 100 hours per month.

Why the sudden switch?

I have to begin an employment acquisition campaign immediately. I found out 2 days ago that the company I am employed by is folding up. The company was founded eleven years ago and will cease to exist at the end of next month. Since I live in Japan and need an income, I had better boost my Japanese language ability in a hurry. The only way I know to do that is to start watching Japanese TV. I mentioned three weeks ago about my coworker who improved his Japanese speaking ability by watching TV. After I posted that, I asked him about it again. I asked him, "How long did it take?" He replied, "3 months."

What kind of improvement do I expect?

I don't know what to expect, but I hope that I will be able to speak Japanese more smoothly. I want to at least appear to be fluent because no Japanese company is going to hire a foreigner who is not fluent in Japanese during times like these. There are not as many job openings and those that are willing to hire foreigners have raised their standards. So I really need to get used to speaking Japanese. I haven't been speaking it much lately and I still get nervous when going into a situation where I'll be expected to speak Japanese.

So I'm saying I'm not good at Japanese now but I want to get good, like, yesterday. How will you know? I don't expect you to take my word for it, nor do I expect you to trust my self-evaluations, so I want to document it by video. Today I went out and finally bought a webcam. A webcam is one of those little video cameras that sits on top of your computer display and makes you feel self-conscious. What I intend to do with it is to record myself speaking Japanese and put the recordings on YouTube. Then whomsoever desires to judge for himself may do so.

So my TV method for Japanese is going to be like Ramses TV method for Spanish. I already have a high level of comprehension in Japanese. I passed the JLPT Level 2 in December 2006. Every time I look at Level 1, though, I go into shock because of all the vocabulary words it tests on. The majority of the words I do not ever remember seeing before. So I won't be doing only Japanese TV as a method. I'll be speaking as well, at least. Most of my speaking will probably just be for the camera.

To be continued...

Korean TV dramas

I just finished watching Phoenix, a Korean TV drama series. I watched it in Mandarin but also have the Korean audio track as well. I am thinking I would like to build up a collection of Korean TV dramas like this bilingual one. Of course I will be watching them in Chinese, but later when I start on Korean I'll have a whole library of Korean dramas available. Not only would I be saving money but also time as well.

There are many reviews about this particular drama that you can find by searching the web. My blog is not aimed at giving reviews for dramas because that would not interest most of the people reading my blog. But I do like to mention things that might be of interest to my audience.

As you may already be aware, this drama is the item that I bought which the discs were all scratched up due to improper packaging. The final disc of five cannot be viewed correctly, so I have only watched 4/5 (four fifths) of the series and I may never know how it ends. Amazon China's return policy is that they don't do exchanges for items shipped overseas. I think it would cost me as much or more to return the item at my own expense than the purchase price which they would refund so I did not return it.

The other interesting thing to note is that this version, published by a Chinese company, has 40~43 minute episodes. The original is actually about 55~60 minutes for each episode. About 15 minutes into the second episode you can see some opening credits in Korean on the screen as the original episode number 2 is just beginning. I guess the Chinese broadcast required shorter episodes. I think the publishing company should have packaged it correctly when they made it available for purchase on DVD. By that, I mean, they should have kept the original episode length and removed the hard coded subtitles. They should provide proper subtitles which can be turned off.

Another interesting thing about this series is that several of the characters could speak English and were conducting business in English but that was dubbed over in Chinese. I only know that the original was in English because there were Korean subtitles displayed. And then the Chinese company put Chinese subtitles over those Korean subtitles. Both in white letters with black outlines. Who could possibly read it?! It's a good thing I don't use the subtitles anyway.

My next post will come later today or this evening. I have an announcement to make. So stay tuned!

another TV methodist

There is a new entry into the world of the TV method! His name is David and he is going to learn Japanese by watching TV. He emailed me and asked me some questions regarding the TV method and we exchanged a few messages. From his email I can see that he understands the principles of Automatic Language Growth and he knows what to expect.

You can read David's story at Sushi and Sumo. I think we'll be getting some exciting reports from him soon. He's currently at 3 hours with the TV method.

I'd wish him good luck, but luck isn't needed with Automatic Language Growth. He just needs to watch TV. Well, maybe he needs luck finding good dramas to watch.

Good Luck, David!

old TV dramas and cartoons

In my quest to be the best, I have passed a milestone. That is, the 500-hour mile marker. I now have 530 hours of viewing Chinese TV. I have done the 500 hours in 6 months. I wonder what my ability to understand Chinese will be like after another 500 hours. It's hard to say exactly, but I feel that overall, I am understanding about 25% of the language now. So I miss out on the details of what is being said, but there are so many phrases that are used over and over that I understand, so perhaps it's not surprising to get about 25% comprehension after 500 hours.

Since my last post, I have watched the complete 39 hours of an old TV drama and 19 hours of Doraemon in Mandarin Chinese.

The old TV drama is called The Legend of the Condor Heroes and is based on a novel. This TV series was aired in 1982 and is not the only one that was made from that popular 1957 novel. The drama I watched is actually a Hong Kong drama in Cantonese but I have the Mandarin dubbed version. It says in the Amazon China page as well as is printed on the discs that the product has Chinese subtitles when in fact there were none! I was glad that the subtitles were missing. The only bad thing was that the audio would sound like your speakers were breaking whenever an actor would yell or hit a syllable loudly. But I think it was not my speakers because even adjusting the volume of my speakers did not affect the problem. It was not a big problem though.


The Mandarin dubbed over the the Cantonese speaking actors matches up very well. So well, in fact, that I was able to forget that it is dubbed. And since this was a period drama, there were no English words or phrases used like there was with the modern drama that I watched prior to this one. I've gone through several pages of listings for the HK dramas on Amazon China and apparently they don't sell bilingual Mandarin/Cantonese dramas.

I placed an order yesterday for 1 item and I realized that the shipping is not 80% of the item price. It appears to be a flat 20 RMB per item which is about 294 JPY.

After finishing the 27 year old TV drama, I started watching a Japanese cartoon in Chinese. The cartoon is called Doraemon. This is some kind of 36 year anniversary pack or something. It has 6 discs in all. 3 of the discs each have 2 90-minute Doraemon movies on them was well as old episodes of the cartoon as a bonus.


So far, I have watched the first 5 discs. Not all of the episodes and movies have included the Japanese audio and not all of them can turn off the subtitles. It seems to me, that in the older episodes, Doraemon has the same name as in Japanese. But in other epsisodes, which looked newer, he goes by a different name.

In one of the movies which has both Chinese and Japanese audio, there was a short silent period and then when the sound came back it was out of sync. Then a funny thing happened. The voice of Doraemon changed. I thought it was strange that his voice would change in the middle of a movie. Then I noticed that his new voice was speaking Japanese! I hadn't noticed it right away. And shortly after that it went back to the Chinese audio and everything was back in sync.

Amongst the various episodes and movies of Doraemon, the voice of the characters was not done by the same people. I found that to be really odd. Especially in one of the movies, the Chinese voice for Doraemon does not resemble the high-pitched Japanese voice at all. If Doraemon doesn't have the right voice it just doesn't sound like him.

Most of the cartoon episodes seemed to be about 6.5 minutes. I found this short span to be ideal. You get a lot of different situations which is ideal for language learners. Also, what is happening in those episodes is pretty transparent. I think you don't need to understand the language at all to be entertained by it, which is probably important for toddlers watching them.

I was pretty bored by the Doraemon movies. In a way, they are completely different from the regular Doraemon episodes. You see, in the episodes, Nobita is always trying to take advantage of something that Doraemon has given him. His plans always backfire and get him into trouble which he hadn't considered before getting carried away. But the storyline in the movie is long and drawn out.

I think I will rewatch only the first 2 discs. It will likely be the last couple of days in a month when I don't want to start on a long drama but I want to get a few more hours in. I will just update my spreadsheet but I won't write a post everytime I rewatch Doraemon.

I have one more Doraemon disc to watch which is 8 hours long, but I am going to go onto the next drama first. The next one for me is a Korean drama which I will only be able to watch 78% of because of the problems with the last disc. I put it in my spreadsheet as 19 hours but the real length of the series is longer.

dubbed into your target language

The name's Bond, LOVE BOND.

As it turns out, all 4 items that I bought from Amazon China are not originally Mandarin TV dramas. I knew that for 2 of them. One is Korean and the other is Japanese. But for the other 2 I didn't know that they were Hong Kong Dramas. For the 2 that I knew about, they have both the original and the dubbed audio tracks. I didn't want to buy dubbed shows unless the original track was also included. Looking back at the product pages, the only way to tell that the other two shows were originally Cantonese is to look at the categories which they fall into. At the bottom of the page is the different categories that the product can be found under. I used the search function of the browser to search the page for the word 'Hong Kong' in Chinese characters in order to find this information. Now I'll know where to check. Live and let learn.

So now I have finished watching the first of my four titles from Amazon. The English title of the drama is LOVE BOND. It is 30 episodes and came on 4 discs. The picture quality is not great but the price is cheap, so that's fair enough.

The discs came in disc sleeves with a box sleeve but no box. This makes the packaging very flat. I put the discs into this 4-disc case.



And I took the box sleeve and put it under the plastic outside of the DVD case.



Who is this old man?

One thing I wasn't particularly too fond of is that a few English sentences and words are used. I suppose this could reflect reality in Hong Kong. I don't know, but now I am guessing that most modern-day dramas from Hong Kong will be like this. The first sentence in English that I heard was, "Who is this old man?" It was said by a woman who was apparently annoyed by the old guy and she kept calling him "old man." At one point he says to her in English, "shut up!" The other parts of the dialogue were in Chinese. There were other instances of whole English sentences being used as well. I find that it annoys me. I think I won't order any more Hong Kong dramas unless it is a bilingual version. Of course, when I start learning Cantonese I won't have any choice.

Vocabulary Explosion

There is an article on the web about why toddlers experience a vocabulary explosion. There are two reports of the same research. Here and here. Here is a quote from the article:

"Children are going to get that word spurt guaranteed, mathematically, as long as a couple of conditions hold," McMurray said. "They have to be learning more than one word at a time, and they must be learning a greater number of difficult or moderate words than easy words. Using computer simulations and mathematical analysis, I found that if those two conditions are true, you always get a vocabulary explosion."

I don't know if the research is well conducted or not. Most research conclusions are more theory than fact.

I think I may be at the beginning of my own vocabulary explosion. It could just be that this drama was special, but I had a larger frequency of new words that I picked up on. It happened much more often during this series than anything I've experienced in the past. I mean I could really tell a difference. I can credit the vocabulary explosion to 2 things for sure. One is that my listening ability has risen to what it is now. I couldn't have gotten to that level without the hours and hours that I have put in so far. The other thing is that my understanding of the language has also risen. Both of these allow me to start understanding more new words at an increased rate of acquisition.

If this drama is any indication, I think I've switched into a higher gear. I've gone from 1st gear to 2nd gear. I'm still fighting the translation demons. But my understanding of Chinese is improving.

Targets for daily input hours

I'm going to try my best to get as many hours in as possible in the next 2 months. I'm not satisfied with the averages I've attained in past months. I can't remember if it was last month or if it was in February, but I had the idea to get a minimum of 4 hours in a day. I thought I should shoot for 5 but not accept less than 4. I didn't really aspire to that idea, but I ended up with just under an average of 4 hours a day last month. I did 122 hours. I should have guaranteed myself 124 hours. Basically, a 6 hour day would make up for a 4 hour day and average to 5 hours. With every day having at least 4 hours, and most days having 5 or more hours, I should be able to get 150 hours or more a month. So this month and next I need to keep myself in check.

This may sound like a lot, or it may sound like no fun to have strict targets, but it is necessary in order to keep from wasting so much time. A lot of time is lost due to the world wide internet. If you're not careful, a whole day can slip away. You can't go back for a "do over." Once you've squandered your time, it's gone. And for what? Nothing! It's time wasted. If 150 hours of TV method is doable for me, then I must have wasted 30 hours last month. I probably wasted more than that.

Focusing on the future

Today is a result of the past. I can never get the past back. I am where I am at now because of what I did in the past. I will give up today so that I can have a better future. I would like to enjoy a future where I can understand Chinese. Once I can understand Chinese, I will never lose it. I can lose physical possessions, but a language is not physical. I carry language with me wherever I go. I don't need to remember to bring my language. It is always inside me. So even if I am not expecting to use it that day, I will have it with me.

learn homophones by ear

The picture above is one of the new DVD boxes that I bought to store my TV dramas in. The disc you see on the left side is on a hinged panel. It swings around and the first disc is on the other side. What's interesting is the way the discs overlap on the right side. This box is the same size as a regular DVD case but holds 4 discs. It's 19 cm tall and 1.5 cm thick.

You can see a picture in my previous posts that shows the Heroic Legend packaging. It has 1 disc per box. So I have 12 DVD boxes for that series. An unfortunate waste of space.

As promised, (did I make a promise?) I finished the Last Agent series by the last day of the month. This is the 2nd time I have watched the 15 hour series, and I still don't know who the last agent is. I'm not sure which character the title refers to. Maybe "agent" has a different meaning than the one I'm thinking of.

There are so many words in English that have multiple meanings. You don't even realize it until you search in a dictionary to try to find the right word. On Sunday, at work I had to translate some English to Japanese. What a pain that was.

Chinese can be said to have a lot of homophones. English has a lot too, but we don't recognize it so easily because given a certain word we may think of one basic meaning. But for many words there are other uses that are actually different meanings. One of the things about being a native speaker is that when a word is encountered in context, the other meanings of the word never come to mind.

If I say I'm going to break a board, or I need to take a break because I'm bored, you would never stop to think about which meaning I intended for the words break and board/bored. And to us the word "break" might seem like the same word because in both instances something is being divided. But a coffee break is fundamentally different than a board break and a learner of English might see them as totally different. I can say I'm breaking a board, but I can't use the -ing for the other kind of break.

So I think that saying a language has a lot of homophones is not a good criterion for a language being difficult to learn. When you know the language well, the context is so specific that you never get the wrong idea, nor do you have to stop and think about the meaning because of all the homophones. Just try this one on for size: A competition to learn how to tie a tie in Thai ended in a tie.

With the TV method, I'm learning by listening. I don't know if this is the same as learning to play an instrument by ear or not. I haven't learned to play the piano, although I did take a piano class in college. But I was thinking the other day that if I was learning to play the piano, it would be a good idea to actually listen to the song that I was learning. If I knew the song well I would be able to recognize if I hit the wrong key in practice. If I didn't know the song well, I could be practicing an unnatural pace and I wouldn't even notice if I got some keys wrong.

When I was in band class around 5th grade, at first I was on drums. I was so bad at keeping the beat that I had to change instruments after a while. I changed to the slide trombone then. I found it difficult to learn to read the music sheet. So I was a pretty bad music student back then too. In fact, I remember a music class where we each had to sing something individually so the teacher could grade us once. I was so off tune that the music teacher didn't seem to believe it. In fact, she seemed disgusted by my awful performance. I'm still bad at singing.

Even though the TV method is a 'learn by ear' method, it won't be a problem learning different meanings for words that sound the same. The brain figures these things out. Just like when you were growing up, before you ever learned to read, you never had a problem with there, they're, and their.

watching TV really helps!

Whether used exclusively or as an addition, watching TV in your target language helps people to acquire fluency. One of the Japanese people I met when I briefly taught English conversation was not a student but rather a teacher just like us Americans, Australians, Brits, Canadians, and Kiwis. She had a perfect American accent and you would never suspect that she grew up in Japan. When I asked her about how she learned English, she told me about watching US TV shows repeatedly and even memorizing the lines in the shows.

I also have a coworker from Sri Lanka who speaks Japanese very fluently. He is much better at Japanese than I. His advice to me was to watch Japanese TV. He credits his fluency in Japanese to watching TV. Before he started watching lots of TV, he said used to have a hard time with Japanese.

There is also a comment on Steve's blog about watching TV that is not dubbed into your own language by Jamie.

Steve, your point about TV programme dubbing is an important one which is often understated. I live in Holland, where nearly everyone speaks English. Kids are already functional well before the age when they receive formal English at school (not until 11 by the way). The reason is exposure, and by having a wealth of English-speaking programmes, films, cartoons etc. on TV that they like watching. i.e. Meaningful input.

My Dutch neighbours speak excellent English, not through schooling or of necessity through work, friends etc., but by what they watch on TV: English programmes and films (often using Dutch or even English subtitles). They have made this point themselves.

The situation is not the same in other European countries, such as France and Italy, where programme dubbing is commonplace. And the average standard of English in these countries is much lower, despite the fact that English is taught in schools.

I think one of the reasons that TV is such a great tool would be that you can get lots of input from TV. You don't need a native speaker or a teacher or a tutor. You can get as much input as you want from TV without relying on anyone else.