People keep telling me that watching TV is a good way to improve your language skills so I’ve tried on and off to get in the habit of watching. But I don’t know, I guess I just haven’t been willing to make the commitment. Until recently that is, when I noticed that one of the kids had been fiddling with the TV and magically turned on the closed captioning for the hearing impaired. And while my French isn’t good enough to understand mumbling cops who use nothing but slang, it is plenty good enough to read the French subtitles. Plus, it turns out that there’s a lot of recycled American fare dubbed in French: ER (Les Urgences), CSI (Les Experts), Without a Trace (FBI Portes Disparus) to name a few. Knowing a bit about the characters and the context does help after all.

>more