Can you learn a language from watching the TV?

I have heard tales of people who claim to have learnt a second language only from watching the TV. Even in the Scandinavian countries and in the Netherlands where they watch the TV in English a lot of the time, many of them tend to speak English practically like a native. So it must be true, mustn’t it?

Well, I don’t think this is the complete story. If you look at how a child learns a language, they may watch the TV but they also try to communicate with others, are regularly corrected when they don’t say things quite right and mum and dad will read books to them. This is a lot of different techniques to learn how to speak their native language.

Watching the TV without comprehending anything is likely to remain a meaningless stream of noise apart from perhaps the odd word.

What makes the Scandinavian and the people from the Netherlands different is that they watch hours and hours of TV in English and at the same time, they have many years of English lessons at school. Doing all those lessons in grammar doesn’t teach you how to actually speak in your target language but it definitely provides a very good foundation. So if you combined your years of grammar studies with a lot of TV, I think this really does get you far! Combine grammar and TV with regular conversation practice or even better, immersion and well, your ability in that language will probably sky-rocket. I think this is where the ‘I watched TV only’ myth comes from...

Anyway, you may not be able to learn a language from TV alone but watching a lot of TV will help. I also think that anything that involves watching TV to learn, just can’t be too bad!