France Tales

I just found a great site, in beta though, that allows you to tell it which videos on video sharing sites you would like to have subtitled. It is called Dot Sub. I have found this to be very helpful when learning French. I find various videos in French and then ask to have then subtitled in French also. I can read along with the audio and it has helped me tremendously. Once they are done I get an email saying they are done and then I can go to the site and watch them. I’m sure there are many other uses for them as well but that is how I have been using it.

It is free to sign up. If you sign up then you can request that videos get subtitled. If you don’t sign up you can view subtitled videos but you cannot request to have any subtitled. Right now it is free but once out of beta testing who knows. Try it out.

I also used it with my English classes. We have begun making blogs in English. I showed them the Blogs in Plain English video. The first time with no subtitling to see how much they could get. The second time with subtitles and we made a chart on the board summarizing the video. The third time we did a gap fill with the subtitles off. The students said it was very effective and a good listening exercise. All teachers of whatever subjects should use this.