[philippoi]

I've been consumed with this idea since going back to France for a few days after living there for five months almost 10 years earlier. I had the experience of trying to learn Danish mostly by immersion and a little by terrible classes (no one seems to have an idea how to make Danish phonetics decently teachable, and that's the number 1 challenge in Danish). I theorized that foreign language learning has evolved to develop a pyramidal approach towards literary translation. That's definitely an important skill, but my guess is 99% of people interested in in a foreign language don't care about that level of language mastery, even in their native tongue, and would much prefer to learn enough grammar to start to acquire more and more conversational fluidity. People shouldn't read poetry in foreign language learning, but magazines. People should watch TV, partly because there's so much TV/video available in every language now via the web, and it's a great venue to hear diversified fluent speakers speak, rather than just actors or newscasters who are trained in speaking as clearly as possible.

My plan for Danish was to try and establish a transcript feed for viewing DR programs online, so you could watch the most audibly diverse shows on your device and quickly refer to the complete transcript (not the CC for hearing impaired because it scrubs the verbal grammar a bit and omits the vocal punctuation that are extremely important for holding your own in a foreign language), and change the playback, jump back and forth a few seconds, etc., the way one reads and rereads a passage in a text that catches their attention or evades comprehension at first.

[deanalevitt]

That sounds really cool, actually. I rely on YouTube/Daily Motion for shows in foreign languages but I struggle without a transcript due to dialect and speed.

When there are subtitles, it helps immensely, so I imagine your idea would be a benefit on top of this already helpful technique.