It's been an eventful month. I've changed countries and I've been to many cities and places. I never stopped thinking about the blog, though. Now, when I've settled down, I'm coming back with a "thinking out loud" type of post. It's a topic I've already briefly talked about but I think it's worth being addressed again.
I'm living in a shared apartment at the moment and my roommate is an English student. So when we watch movies together, we sometimes watch them in English. At some point he said he was worried that he understands a lot when we have the subtitles turned on; but as soon as we turn them off, it's much more difficult to figure out what the actors are saying.
I can see that many people are worried that they can't stop watching movies and TV shows without subtitles. It's true that when you read subtitles, you mostly develop your reading skills and you just hear what the actors say but don't listen to WHAT they are saying. Don't get me wrong, it IS important to develop your listening skills but many people are too worried about being dependent on subtitles when they shouldn't be worried at all.
Many native speakers use subtitles, too. English has a huge number of different dialects so sometimes it's difficult to comprehend what the actors with a certain accent are saying. I've even seen a TikTok video making fun of Gen Z for not being able to understand movies without subtitles so it's a whole generational trend.
My point is that if it's difficult for you to understand something without subtitles it does not necessarily mean that you're bad at English or listening. Maybe it just means that the actors are speaking in a way you're not used to. And that's okay, that's what the subtitles are made for.
