At work, I tutor international students who are learning English while completing the IB program. Despite the fact I have been learning a second language since I was 12, I have gained a new appreciation for how challenging language learning is. The students I tutor complete all of their classes in English, so they are doing twice the work in every class. So I think it is important to remind them that learning a new language doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, it can open you up to new cultures, stories, and worlds.

In my undergraduate degree I completed a minor in Film Studies, and I plan to use film and TV regularly in my classroom. I think it is a fantastic way to bring different dialects, and cultures into the language classroom. But one problem that comes up is what language to put the subtitles in. If I use subtitles in the students’ first language, students will simply read that and not be able to make the connection between the two languages. On the other hand, if it is in the same language as the film, they may not understand the film. That’s where Language Reactor, a Chrome extension comes into play.

Language Reactor will pop up in Netflix and provide both the translation language (language the viewer speaks fluently) and the Netflix subtitle language (the language the viewer is learning) simultaneously. This allows the viewer to make direct connections between both languages while still understanding what is happening. But Language Reactor is so much more powerful that than. The viewer can also click on any word and get a direct translation, hear it out loud, and save it for later.

Here is a video that shows this awesome resource in action.

And here is the link to the extension.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-reactor/hoombieeljmmljlkjmnheibnpciblicm