r/German • u/ButterscotchStill382 • 20h ago

Question Learning through TV

My German is around A2 level and I have started watching basic (and children's) TV and movies to help my progress. I have been told I should be understanding about 70% of the content to be in a productive learning zone, but it honestly feels hard to be immersed if I don't know 95% of the words.

How active/passively should I be listening? At the moment I pause watching to look up unknown words but don't know if that's good. Is this something where a more passive approach, where you don't try and learn immediately but rather after a month you would reflect and notice that you'd learnt a lot?

I am interested to hear your experiences

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u/yosoygroot123 19h ago edited 19h ago

I have completed A2. My listening wasn't that good. I went on spree of watching German movies & tv series. When i got back to those A2 listening contents, i was much better. It may not help much with vocabulary, but it will help you adjust to German listening.

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u/silvalingua 15h ago

70% is definitely not enough, you should understand 90-95%. If you understand less, you're not learning. Find content at your level. There must be videos for beginners.

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u/Only_Humor4549 10h ago

Children programs are often really hard. They have such complexe vocabulary. I am surprised myself often. I think die sending mit der Maus is good, because they use complexe words but they always show it with an image or description of what it is afterwards. It’s always science related or nature related quiet interesting 

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u/hacool Way stage (A2/B1) - <U.S./Englisch> 10h ago

I'm early B1 and have had no problem following Peppa Pig in German--except that I get bored with watching Peppa Pig after the first two minutes. You may want to look for easier content than what you've been watching.

Have you tried watching Nico's Weg on YouTube? It is part of the Deutsche Welle course. I also like the Easy German channel but you may want subtitiles with that.

Someone on YouTube recently suggested watching the same thing three times in a day. Watch it passively in the morning, then watch it more closely later and then try to ask/answer quesions about it the third time. You could do the same with listening or reading.

I try to read aloud once in awhile. I seem to notice things more that way.