Asterix, for those unfamiliar, is essentially the Mickey Mouse of France. As such, French culture can arguably be indexed in his stories, where this Gaul from a little village in Armorica drinks a magic potion to gain the strength to regularly repel Roman attempts to subjugate the last of the Gaulish tribes. One can reasonably assume that the French idealize the fortifying qualities of wine, which could certainly be described as magical, as well as the simple life, free of foreign influences. The latter has played out, for instance, in their general rejection of German influences in their music from the Baroque era up to at least the latter part of the Romantic era, as well as in tense debates over whether Muslims can cover their heads in schools and even in public spaces in general. While this is all well and good, Asterix is more importantly useful for learning French.
As I wrote about before, video games can be a great source of linguistic immersion, but so can TV and film. The question is how exactly to watch a film, though, to get the most out of it in terms of language learning. That is, one can view a foreign film with subtitles (in one’s native language), captions (in the target language), or just as is, each providing different advantages. Bianchi and Ciabattoni, linguists from the University of Salento and the University of Pavia respectively, did a fairly convincing study on this in 2008. While I haven’t had time to do a thorough reading of the literature, I think this study is a good starting place and mostly agrees with the results of previous studies cited in the write-up.
Bianchi and Ciabattoni found that, in general, beginners benefit most from watching foreign films with subtitles. This is often what happens in low level courses when a film is put on, although my gut feeling is that most students simply read the subtitles, watch the action, and pay no attention to the actual language being used. Presumably, the reason that this works for beginners is because they can attach sounds and images to immediate translations, eventually building up connections, which is supported by Bianchi and Ciabattoni’s finding that acquisition is most likely when all three of these input streams match up the best. This means that focusing simply on two levels of input and ignoring the third is a sure way to fail to improve one’s language skills, even if it is still entertaining.
Things change when looking at advanced speakers, however, according to Bianchi and Ciabattoni. In these cases, captions are the most useful. The difference is presumably that subtitles begin to vie for attention when learners are already capable of parsing most of the input directly. This matches the general trend of beginning language learning with lots of translations and then moving more and more towards remaining consistently in the target language. For instance, beginner textbooks often translate everything but, by the intermediate levels, teachers begin suggesting that students use standard dictionaries in the language being learned. Ultimately, the goal is to live in the language, avoiding the potentially extra processing required to flip back and forth constantly.
Why would Asterix be good for all this, though? He wouldn’t be. That is, he wouldn’t be good for advanced learners. One should generally seek out media that uses language just above the level that they currently understand. Asterix films, with their relatively basic vocabulary, should work well for beginners, but that same limited vocabulary would mean that advanced users could only use them for things like practicing listening comprehension. The input hypothesis, developed by Krashen, is generally pretty terrible, but this part of the idea is difficult to argue against. Imagine, for example, trying to parse a phrase with five unknown content words and one unknown grammatical construction compared to a phrase with just one unknown word. Clearly, one would have an easier time with the second phrase because there would be that many more context clues to work with.
Unfortunately for Louisiana, though, there are very few films and, as far as I know, no TV shows in Louisiana French. Louisianians wishing to learn French simply have to make do with materials from outside sources, ironically, considering Louisiana’s designation as “Hollywood South.” Perhaps the potential for French becoming part of the film industry here will be the subject of a later post.
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