How YouTube, Netflix and video are becoming major sources for foreign language studies
What motivates people to learn foreign languages? It may come as a surprise but nowadays more and more young people start their studies after falling in love with a series, a movie or a YouTube channel that has no proper and fast translation to their native language.
For instance, Daria, 27, who has recently gone to Alicante for a 2-week Spanish language course, discovered her interest in learning Spanish because of a series. Full of mysteries and plot twists, the series engaged her so deeply that she could not wait for any subtitles and watched almost half of the episodes in Spanish. To her own surprise, she was able to understand a lot. Furthermore, the lyrics of her favorite songs by Enrique Iglesias and Natalia Oreiro also became clearer for her. Following that sudden immersion into the Spanish language, she enrolled in an online course and a few months later was ready for her trip to Spain.
As a founder of a platform for booking language courses abroad LinguaTrip.com, I hear similar stories regularly. We’ve asked over 3.5 thousand of our students from all over the world about their language studies and found out that an astonishing 94% of them use various videos to study languages, with TV series being the most popular choice, reported by 53% of respondents. “It’s my favorite part of learning a new language!”, one of the survey participants claimed. Our students who study English named all types of shows from classic sitcoms like Friends, The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother to fantasy shows like Games of Thrones and Teen Wolf and dramas like The Crown. Almost 14% of those surveyed use Netflix to watch their favorite shows and movies. To my surprise, however, films inspire only 28% of our respondents, surpassed by YouTube-bloggers. The latter are watched regularly by 44% of those who participated in our survey.
It seems that bloggers have a natural appeal to foreign students who get the chance to listen to specific topics of interest, acquiring useful vocabulary and learning relevant slang. Only 25% of our respondents consider building vocabulary to be a challenge for them, even less have problems with listening and understanding the speech of natives — 14.5%, it’s the least challenging aspect of language studies, according to the survey.
“When watching my favorite films I understand everything, and I’m really proud of myself”, one of the respondents said. “I enjoy the feeling that this language is no longer a foreign language for me”, admitted another.
Other types of video content, frequently mentioned by our students, are Ted Talks, beloved by almost 15% of our survey participants, and educational videos from the world’s best universities, published on such platforms as FutureLearns, Khan Academy, Udemy, and EdX, — 4.5% of respondents regularly watch them.
Many students mentioned that watching videos is the major learning method for them, as were some other online resources. 87% of all surveyed prefer to learn the language on their own, using various mobile applications and websites to support their studies. They combine it with going to learn the language abroad: 29% of respondents tried it, it’s the second most common way to study a foreign language according to the survey. Attending offline courses comes in third with only 21.5%, followed by 19% of those who listen to online courses.
Participants of the research named about 70 mobile applications and online resources they use for their studies. Social networks turned out to be the most effective source of ‘edutainment’ with over 33% of respondents watching YouTube channels and vlogs with native speakers of their studied language. Instagram was also considered to be an educational source by 4.5% of the respondents. Duolingo and Lingualeo came as third and second most commonly used sources, mentioned by 17 and 16% of respondents respectively.
The digital ways of studying languages seems to attract more and more fans, and it’s not a surprising fact when we consider the bad experiences with traditional classroom-based language studies which many of the respondents have had in the past. The survey showed us that 45% of all respondents remember their school/college lessons of a foreign language as a mandatory routine and another 23% agreed that it was a useless waste of time. Less than a quarter of respondents (23%) considered them productive, another 5% could not remember anything about their lessons.
A majority of those who participated in the survey (47%) believe that they reached only basic proficiency at school/college, while another 26% have not reached even that level. It’s no wonder that given such evidence of a poor level of school/college language classes, the lack of motivation turned out to be the main barrier to start studying a chosen foreign language for 43% of our respondents. Other barriers, such as lack of time or lack of funds scored at 22 and 17% respectively. Respondents admitted that some bloggers and online-resources are the main source of inspiration for them.
At the end of the day, 51% of all respondents learn foreign languages for self-development (compared to 30% who learn a language for travel and 28% who need language for work or career progression).
This considered, it’s sensible that entertaining resources and content turn into major educational sources. YouTube and Netflix will probably enjoy even higher popularity among language students in the future, and companies recognize their own potential in this field. In a recent interview Susan Wojcicki, YouTube CEO, named “a higher emphasis on learning and education” as one of the major commitments for the platform in 2018.
