Over the past few days, I have been rewatching the drama series “Dahmer” on Netflix. This series is based on the true story of Jeffrey Dahmer, who confessed to have murdered and dissected the bodies of 17 men from 1978 to 1991. He was convicted of his multiple crimes and sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison, but his life was cut short in 1994, when he was killed by his fellow inmate, Christopher Scarver.
I watched “Dahmer” for the first time in 2022, right after it was released on Netflix. It was a gripping story that kept me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. Recently, I’ve decided to watch it again, but this time in French audio with English subtitles, for the purpose of practicing my French listening skills. As of yesterday, out of the 10 episodes, I’ve already watched eight. I’ll finish the remaining two episodes tonight.
As things stand now, I can understand about 80 percent of the French audio, but that doesn’t mean that my listening skills will soon be perfect. The gap of 20 percent covers the sections containing words and phrases that are not yet known to me. Unless I look them up in the dictionary and commit them to memory, I won’t ever be able to bridge that gap, no matter how many times I watch the same content.
Currently, I am in the middle of “sweeping” my French dictionary for unknown words and phrases. Given that my dictionary contains 765 pages’ worth of entries and I can only study about 2.5 pages per day, and allowing for a couple of cheat days out of every week, the entire process is expected to take approximately a year. As such, acquiring a robust enough vocabulary to understand French shows and movies will definitely be a long and slow undertaking.
However, for the parts that I can understand, watching the series with French audio is highly beneficial for me in the sense that it forges the connection between my existing knowledge of words and phrases and the actual way in which they are pronounced. Once that connection has been firmly established, it will never be undone, and will be permanently integrated into the foundation of my listening skills.
That’s why comprehensible input is important, and you should find a listening material at a level suitable for you, rather than something too difficult that sounds like a bunch of gibberish.
When I’m done studying the French audio of “Dahmer,” I plan to do the same thing with other Netflix shows I’ve previously enjoyed watching, such as “Squid Game” and “Inventing Anna.” I’m excited at the prospect of gradually solidifying my listening comprehension skills, before eventually learning to speak French fluently, years down the road.
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