Can Kids TV Create Fluency in Another Language?
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- When people suggest that you can start learning a language by watching kids shows, does that idea have any merit?
Timestamps
0:00 POOP: A Philosophy for Language Learning
0:48 Getting Started with Kids TV
1:39 Spongebob by the Numbers
1:59 100 Day Challenge
3:24 Learning via Spongebob vs. Friends
4:56 Does Spongebob Poison Your Mind?
6:23 2 Other Factors
6:57 How to best use kids TV
7:42 Bonus
Thanks for watching! There are 7+ channels to watch Spongebob / Nickelodeon in different languages:
German: www.youtube.com/@NickelodeonDeutschland
Spanish: czcams.com/video/CEq6_qnZgO4/video.html
Korean: www.youtube.com/@NickKorea
French: www.youtube.com/@NickelodeonFrance
Japanese: www.youtube.com/@NickelodeonJapan
Hebrew: www.youtube.com/@nickelodeonIsrael/videos
Arabic: www.youtube.com/@NickelodeonArabia
English: www.youtube.com/@SpongeBobOfficial
EDIT: adding more languages
rip mandarin
Where is English one
No Russian )':
I believe in the beginning any animation is better than live-action content because it is dubbed by default. Dubbed voices are almost always clear and distinct while live-action on set recordings can sometimes turn into Churchill meme. Old movies especially suffer from this.
South korean football player Son Heung-Min is proof of this, having allegedly learnt German by watching spongebob
Disney+ has content dubbed in many languages, I've been watching Phineas & Ferb in Swedish
Smart. Are you able to watch any of the Astrid Lindgren shows anywhere?
Lycka till med din språkresa, ge inte upp.
I've been watching Phineas and Ferb in Turkish 😅
The show is just the perfect pick ig
Disney + doesn't have russian 🙄
It's funny you released this vid because i've been watching Spongebob in russian for the past 10 days
Näbbdjuret Perry!
I am watching Peppa Pig (pipsa possu) in finnish and I have been learning so much faster. Honestly I am also excited to watch it everyday.... it's fun.
Also, the sentences are short and useful (Pippa and her friends pretend they are at a supermarket (so you can learn how a native would talk in this situation); they have episodes where a character is sick and they call a doctor, etc. I think those phrases are very useful
I'm watching Peppa Pig in Dutch :) I love it!
@@cristinamicsa5549 ❤️❤️
Świnka Peppa in Polish is at the moment my go to method
@@danielhower5950Powodzenia w nauce polskiego!
how can i watch peppa pig in American English? I did find the episodes but they are in British English
I used LazyTown songs to learn Icelandic pronunciation. It was a very useful technique
Vá bjóst ekki við því að sjá einhvern nefna íslensku á þessu vidjoi😅 hvernig gengur að læra?💪🩷
The original creators of LazyTown were Icelandic.
I haven't watched any kids shows in German yet, but I'm absolutely gonna go binge Spongebob auf Deutsch in a moment!
You won't regret it. Seriously. I watched both, and I can vouch for the immaculate voice acting and amazing added in-jokes - overall a masterful dub. And I'm saying that while being absolutely not a fan of most German dubs - before my compatriots come at me, they might be great on a technical level, but especially sitcoms sound so frckn unnatural - it's like they tried to speak German while retaining the prosody and enthusiasm of American speakers and it just sounds kind of asinine and fake. *Friends* is a notable example of this.
But SpongeBob just kind of really nailed it - even though it's literally a cartoon set in a fantasy underwater town populated by anthropomorphic sea critters (and a Texan squirrel), they sound believable, and it really makes you feel like you're under the sea with them.
Lmao I usually don't comment on videos, but I felt like sharing my appreciation for the show and the dub (oh and oc, the original is amazing too. Can't decide which one I like more.)
what site can you watch it on
„Ich heiße nicht… RIIIIIIIIIIICK!“
@@anotherartfulwhippersnapper what did you watch it on, ive been trying to find it
It will be awesome
Well, that explains why reading Asterix worked so well for learning French and Latin
Latin? :0
I'm going through The Last Airbender / Legend of Korra at the moment (which are kind of kids shows but not really, especially the latter). I've seen these shows so much I know the iconic dialogue by heart, especially with context. Watching it again but in German, I'm amazed at how fast I was able to pick up the essential words, and after half a season I don't even notice it being in German anymore. I'm just enjoying the show, but at the same time it feels kind of fresh because it's in a new language. Would definitely recommend!
Anyway keep up the good work! As a fellow engineer your data-driven approach really speaks to me, and it helped my carve out my path for language learning.
Vielen Dank!
ohhh watching atla is a great idea, i should try that as well! you're so lucky for doing that in german, we have an amazing dubbing industry :D
liebe grüße aus berlin
Really fell in love with Luisa Wietzorek as Korra! I read she dubs Ellie in TLOU2 as well, might give me the motivation to actually finish it finally 😅
@@hutsaniffo oh yeah, she has a really lovely voice! good luck with that haha
Both of those are definitely kids shows. Dont delude yourself.
I wish it had German subtitles, but one day I'll understand it!
Why is this genius idea never crossed in my mind. I've used Drama, Music, Anime, Movie, Audiobook as my immersion when learning Japanese
I'm sold out man, thank you so much!
what i find frustrating about this strategy is that sometimes the captions aren’t the exact same words as what the characters are saying
What helped me learn english when i was a child, was actually Thomas the Tank Engine show that I used to watch in English more, now I'm trying to learn Spanish using anime dubs like Dragon Ball, Doraemon and many others
What a delight 😛 I also grew up loving Thomas the Tank Engine and we just started playing the music for our almost-2-year-old and he loves it
Pepper Pig is free on YT and in pretty well every language you can think of.
I use it too for my languages. The French version is my favorite so far
So is bluey
I watch it in Dutch!
I've definitely used the Nickelodeon Deutschland channel on CZcams, but I keep running into the same issue: in order to be engaging to children, the voices are often exaggerated to the point of being difficult to discern the precise sounds in a word. Subtitles help with this immensely, but they aren't always available (and the auto-generated ones aren't always accurate). All that said, I definitely agree that kids shows are a super useful tool for beginners and intermediate learners alike.
Download a language subtitle extension
Dude what a godsend. I didn't realize there was official German Spongebob episodes for free.
If you read the chart at the end and also wondered if the Japanese language had any other word for sponge besides the English loanword, another word for sponge (the animal and not the tool/material) is 海綿 「かいめん」, of the same etymology as the simplified chinese one in the chart.
And yeah, it is composed of the characters for sea 海 and cotton 綿.
Enjoy your two free words.
What's good about the internet age is that many of these companies have branches where they post clips, trailers, and songs from their various shows. For Spanish, there's like a Disney LATAM and Disney España
I watched the first three seasons of Spongebob (the ones I grew up with) dubbed in Japanese at age 27-28 and had an absolute blast. If you grew up with something and feel nostalgic towards it, especially something like Spongebob that we as a society still meme on as adults, it's really worthwhile IMO.
I've begun learning German lately (about a month ago, mostly Anki sentences/phrases with audio but I've been mixing in watching stuff on Disney+ a little) and would love to do this. I need to figure out what I need to do to watch it in German.
In Japanese I jumped through some hoops to buy these seasons on Amazon Prime JP and use(d) a VPN to watch, though IIRC last I looked I think they're on Hulu JP without a purchase? Again, with VPN.
Man i looked for nickelodeon shows in jp for so long. Nothing I could find was free.
did you figure out how to find german spongebob?
I literally learn to speak English because the only cartoon shows on the TV & popular youtube videos when I was young were English. There was a point in my life were I've watched so much english content to the point the I cant talk back at people without talking like foreigner who's learning the language for the first time, I know what they are saying but I dont know how to say it in our language without using english words lol.
This is an incredibly well researched video. This channel deserves to blow up
I recently started doing this with SpongeBob specifically actually so it’s great to see you. Do an analysis on it. My one question is what level should you be at to start engaging in something like this?
I did this with avatar the last air bender a few years ago in French. It was great. I was able to understand everything being said by the end of the series! Wonderful video. Thanks for doing what you do
Doing that right now with Spanish! Let's see how it goes!
As always, great content!
I’ve always enjoyed animations more than adult shows so I’ve actually been doing this for a while since I’m learning german too. I watched quite a few seasons of Miraculous Ladybug and Cuphead in German dub, but I’m also watching anime in german dub too! It’s pretty fun actually
my first movie that i watched in english was animaniacs' movie
I gotta say, the "it's pretty fun actually" is such a beautiful glimpse into your language learning. It seems like you've got a light and playful approach which should really keep you engaged long term
where do you watch anime dub? I've been looking to watch Death Note dubbed in German literally everywhere ;-;
This is so good! Def adding this to the list
Did this myself when I first started learning spanish and it seems like a no brainer. I also combined watching kids TV shows with reading kids books and that seemed to work really well for me. If immersion/comprehensible input is truly the key to language learning then starting with content that is more comprehensible to a beginner level should be the standard practice for learning language.
I'm curious if you have any plans to do a full test of this theory and to do your own 100 day challenge to see how accurately it lines up with what your data suggests.
I’m currently towards the end of one with Polish (~10 more days) though I’ve been a bit more Anki focused. But data is still data. Stay tuned 😁
I'm currently using this approach to learn French and Russian. At the very beginning I was only using terror/horror movies, which are the ones I love and I started by watching those I already knew in my own language. But then I realised it was more practical to use a TV series because of what you pointed out, the repetition of patterns and vocabulary, and it was more manageable to see an episode daily than a full movie. So I started to watch 'Stranger Things' which has only four seasons compared to 'Spongebob' many more. I didn't see 'Stranger Things' before in my own language, so I actually have only seen it in French and in Russian. There are fewer episodes so what I do is go back to season one again. It´s fascinating how every iteration I catch something new I didn´t get last time so I know this approach is getting results. I've also seen 'Death Note' because episodes are shorter so when I didn´t have enough time at least I had something done daily and also to add a different content (after watching something 10 times it starts to get boring). Death note use a much more different 'tone', at least in the russian version I´ve seen, so it's adding more vocabulary (or I believe so).
Anyways, I've been doing this for the last year and half and I´m starting to test myself online, so take this with a grain of salt, and I'm now at around B1 level. I thought I was going to be fluent by the end of this year but I now think it's going to take me much, much longer, but since I don't have to study and just watch something I find amusing it's not really a downer for me.
A note for those who use this approach: having a 100% perfect transcrypt is not likely going to happen, but more than being a problem it's a bless because you are expanding your vocabulary twice (your brain will pick what they say and what's written even tho it's not entirely the same but is used in the same way). So, don´t let that bother you and keep watching content.
Finally, (I'm sure nobody will read to this very bottom but... ) I'm trying to learn chinese this way, but I haven´t found any TV series with chinese dubbing apart from 'Peppa Pig' here in youtube. Sadly Peppa it´s not very engaging for me, so If anyone knows another dubbed TV kids of series... let me know!
喜羊羊与灰太狼 pleaseant goat and big wolf, the story is like a shounen anime but to much younger children. You can try Ok哥，it's not a kid TV show, it's a fishing/diver/exploration around the world channel, but it's engaging and the dialogue is very repetitive and simple, a lot more than any Chinese kid show a tried
@@shokujinki Thanks for the recommendation. I'll give them a try.
How’s French been going? Just visited and I’m very inspired but very basic level right now
@@Eric-qh7is How long have you been trying to learn French? I started a year and a half and now I'm at B1 level but I don´t invest as much time as I do with Russian. Since I'm native spanish speaker French is 'easy' for me. I can read extensively at this point but other areas are yet to be improved. I expect to become fluent next year, if I stay this disciplined.
The tangible proof is that a 5 year old kid which is already fluent in English, can speak confidently and a good pace even though their vocab isn’t advanced but those bases are what will makes us advanced someday
Another very interesting video, based on facts, not blah blah. I like this! Looking forward to see more of you.
When Krashen meets computational linguistics.
If you guys have any tips on where to find children shows, please comment here ! (Specially in mandarin)
It's even better if you can find a show that is native to the language you're learning. There are so many great old Soviet cartoons that are really fun to watch and great for learning Russian as they were made by native speakers for kids so it's easy to learn, is guaranteed to be correct and fits within the cultural context of the language, even if a bit dated in the case of Soviet stuff.
I don’t know if you’ll see this but as someone with adhd, seeing all this put together in such an easily digestible, logical format inspires me to learn more than anything else I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched very little of what you have to offer, but I don’t think I’m going to stop watching anytime soon.
Thank you for making sense.
This makes me unbelievably happy to read 🙂. Good luck learning!
This was really interesting, thank you ☺️
Loved this! A really unique video idea 😊
Thank you!! 😊
I love numbers and am currently learning German, I love watching your videos, thank you for all the effort you put into them! ! :)
Glad you like them! Und viel Glück beim Deutschlernen
I'm learning english by watching your videos.
Keep up the good work.
thanks for anki deck . it's best and challenging deck to learn through, words you have picked are helpful and to aware about in the conv and irl which decks i have don't it as the same way yours deck do . kudos
Is this a Artscroll Gemara in the background? My man is a man of culture ❤
We actually learned the words “amigos” AND “esponja Bob” in my Spanish class, implying both are important
It's Bob esponja in spanish. Full name translates to Bob Esponja Pantalones Cuadrados officially by the dubbed version.
5:39 "Steal Secret Recipe". What a fun little detail
Comments like this are why I put in so much effort on small details 75% of the way through a video 😜
Good quality video! You definitely deserve a larger audience and i appreciate your content.
Longer footnote: I see that you have spent quite some time with German which is the same language i'm trying to conquer so i was wondering specifically if you have any recommendations for how to improve general language skills in just 3 months preparing for a C1 exam (I'm B1/B2). Is it better to focus on vocab or grammar and do i achieve that goal through more reading, watching tv shows or flaschards?
Thanks - it's definitely a grind trying to find that bigger audience but I'm really glad you enjoy it! I'd recommend doing the things you want to improve at, whether that's listening, writing or speaking by setting aside time where that's you're only activity and you can get feedback. It's tough for me to say what will work best on a limited timeframe but I found that what had the biggest payoff for me was vocab study and then immersing as much as I could to see the words I was learning. And find snippets throughout the day to listen as much as possible (e.g., on a walk, commuting, doing dishes, folding laundry, exercising etc.).
Good luck on the exam! And let me know how it goes!
3:37 LMAO I'm crying
Great video! I'll try this out with my girlfriend to teach her Norwegian! Seems like a fun daily ritual to watch a "Svampebob Firkant" episode together
Also, instantly spotting 'kill' right next to 'myself' at 5:25 felt a bit creepy, haha
Fantastic video, thanks
this is so cool! do you recommend having eng subtitles on with the language dubbed? or keep eng subtitles off? or even put the dub language as subtitles too?
i am so lucky that my current favorite show is a chillean childrens show :) its helped so much with comprehension
When I was a kid we only had German tv (I am Dutch). Over the years my brothers and I learnt German by only watching tv and we would have full blown German conversation with one another, but my parents didn't believe us.
Until 1 day a couple who knew German visited and we had very long conversation. The couple were amazed at our German speaking skills and couldn't believe we learnt all that from tv.
Unfortunately we switched cable and didn't use any German so it all faded away.
Amazing. Thank you
this is an awesome test/experiment
I learned a great deal of japanese from watching Slice of Life anime, which includes a lot of day to day topics that are helpful for learning. I also learned some portugese and spanish from playing Farcry 6 with portugese subtitles, as a lot of the latin roots of spanish and portugese are pretty easy to understand just by reading them. I dont know how to verbalize any of the language yet, but i know how to read portugese just fine
Amazing video!!!
I liked how you aproach to the language learning process. Now I'm learning French and I'd be so happy If someone recommend me interesting French cartoons.
!!!!!
@@Eric-qh7is From which platform I can watch this?
No clue but I want to know!!
Linus et boom is one however just search for them on google i found a whole list
@@Eric-qh7is i’d like to know too
I watch Bluey to learn Dutch and definitely recommend it for any language!! SO GOOD
Thanks for the vid, it was interesting and not unnecessarily long 😆 I wish I could find Spongebob in french
I'm Slovene, but only a few of my VHS tapes are in my native language while most are in German and for that reason, I never chose to learn German in primary school.
I use lingq to auto-generate audio description (they use AI and it is 99% correct). I download the audio from the episode first and then send it to lingq. It's very helpful.
Oh that's awesome that they have such good audio transcriptions!
Avatar The Last airbender is a great tool for learning English. Actually, I'm not into kids TV but this show is really cool. I even tried to watch Pokemon, that I would like when I was younger, but today I find it really boring, but the language is very accessible. So if you like it, give it a try.
I was hoping you'd actually do it...
but no worries youve motivated me to try it myself
Well, your video inspired me. I am fluent in English and I love Germany, my father went to Germany for work when he was young and I intend to move there, so with your encouragement, I will test your theory in practice. I will be watching series like SpongeBob in german for 100 days to help me understand the basics of german and I will bring the result of the 100 days here.
The critical thing is to like the programme before you commit. I could not watch sponge 100+ times.
this is rad. will be watching spongebob in spanish now
and that's why i'm watching miraculous ladybug in the original french dub - thank you very much for that video, it was once again very informative!!
Same. Although with Marinette's speaking pace it's sometimes harder to keep up :P
@@faithhopelove9567 i'm so glad i'm not the only one who noticed that haha
@@DanaCleopatraHerzog I guess once we understand her, it's gonna be all smooth sailing in France lol
I found watching simple kids or your favorite movies in target language (with subs in that language) helps learning. I watched bluey in Japanese which really helped to hear casual talking, but then watched Deadpool 1 & 2 which helped with swears and other words I remembered from the movies. Need a healthy mix and a descent Disney + subscription.
If you use content about something you are deeply familiar with, like your job or farming if you grew up on a ranch, it can make the content you seek in your target language very approachable and understandable, even if you don't understand any word.
Kids shows that I have used (and continue to use ) for learning languages
Spanish:
Pokémon
The Legend of Aang
The Legend of Korra
Inazuma Eleven
Over the Garden Wall
French:
Pokémon
Inazuma Eleven
Gravity Falls
Studio Ghibli Movies (not really kids but whatever)
Where did you watch the spanish shows. I don’t know how to find kids shows that are dubbed in spanish.
@@user-dk9fz6en4x pokémon has a neat website called pokemon project with all episodes in Spanish. Aang and Korra are on Netflix, Inazuma Eleven is on YT and Over the Garden Wall I found om a random website
Where did you find the french versions of these shows? I'm learning French too
@@yuraselivanov4270 inazuma eleven on youtube and dailymotion, gravity falls on Disney Plus, Studio Ghibli on Netflix
In language learning of course learning words is a must but you’ve never taiked about common or frequent phrases or the chunks. By the time i was learning english always i felt the importance of frequent phrases. Please make a detailed video on common or frequent phrases importance in second language learning🖤
Check out the last video on ngrams - it’s exactly the concept you mentioned 😃
My Spanish and French are really good, but because I was learning languages for the first time, and was still figuring things out, I somehow managed to skip some pretty basic vocabulary that most kids know. So I'm left in the pretty hilarious situation where I can follow along with the entire plot of French drama miniseries, but I wouldn't for the life of me be able to tell you the French word for pillow.
I just looked it up, and it's "oreiller" How have I not heard that word before?
It certainly can, sincei used to watch English cartoons to learn it since english isnt my first language ^_^
This briefs so damn well. Aaaaaand now I wanna watch Spongebob. SOB...
I really recomend watching growing up with hello kitty
Extremly easy to understand for non english speakers
I watched Arthur for learning French and it actually helped
I exposed my 3 year old daughter to Sophia the First and was shocked by how much I was learning.
I'm wondering if I should do foreign language shows with my kids. Growing up I watched an insane amount of spongebob and looney tunes in Turkish and felt it helped me a ton as a kid. I have little ones of my own now and am wondering if showing them German would help them (and me...) learn German.
Kids definitely stay hooked on TV hahaha. For me, it introduces bigger questions around screentime but if they pick up a language and you have plans for them to stay engaged with it longer term, it's worth considering
I’ve thought about this too. My kids currently don’t watch tv (under 3) so my thought is that once they start I’ll limit it to foreign language content only. Perhaps it’ll dissuade them from getting too hooked. And if they do, hey at least they learned something
I watched the entirety of Game of Thrones in german when my german was on beginner level. I think it helped a lot by the end but the weird names and relationships in the show complicated it so much and thus after every episode i would read the synopsis of it in english on Wikipedia so I'm sure what happened in the story.
I would definitely recommend starting with kids shows and then switch to live actions as you approach intermediate
Watching live actions dubbed is a pain in the ass
Nunca nadie me había estado tan interesada en un video solo por que amo a bob esponjaaaaaaaa jajajajajaja
Can’t wait to blast SpongeBob in german every night, my girlfriend is going to love me
Cool to see soemone cover this :0
😛
Where did you find full episodes of SpongeBob? I'm trying to watch it in Spanish with subtitles but I can't find it anywhere with subs.
I didn't know Ari Shaffir had started an underrated CZcams channel
That cuts deep 😭
The fact i speak english is quite literally proof of the impact media has on language development
Well I watch a lot of anime and the only Japanese word I know is NANI!?
I'm learning Russian, should I watch Russian dubbed spongebob? I grew up with Spongebob and I feel like it would improve my learning by watching the familiar material, I'd already know what most episodes were about so I'd have a good way to figure out the meaning of the words
i learned my second language mostly ONLY BY SPONGE BOB. (my first and second language are slavic so they are similar). So, it helped me go to school and study in my second language till age of 6
I find some cartoons extremly hard to undertand, due to the mixing with sound effect and music but also and mainly due to how the voice actors are making very weird voices to give a stronger personality to their characters.
I'm currently learning russian and I don't understand anything when I watch sponge bob, AND because they speak very badly, automatic subs don't work either.
The russian version of winnie poo is already easier to understand, and the text of the songs are easy to find online.
My favorite cartoon to watch to improve my russian is три кота. They speak very clearly, are all available online et the automatic subs are working 99% of the time.
I also disagree with the idea that watching cartoon is for beginners. If you want to watch cartoons in the target language without having to search every other word in a dictionnary, you need to have a pretty wide vocabulary already. (Of course it depends of the cartoon)
i already know English and Portuguese, now i want learn Russian (its a quite easy) and Chinese. My dream is learn those and more farsi, Thai and guarani, but its so hard find course in these language where i live (rio de janeiro), so my only choice is learn by myself, although the difficulty is very pleasant
I found an app which has kids books in dual languages. I was looking for something else buts it’s so cool. Basic stuff, which is where I’m at. And it reads the book out loud. It’s designed for parents raising kids in a dual language household. But it’s perfect for my level.
thats cool! what is the app name?
1:50 which episodes are the massive outliers?
Looks like there should only be 3 of these massive outliers based on a few specials that were aired:
Episode 92 is "Atlantis SquarePantis" which had a 40 minute runtime
Episode 123 is "Truth or Square" which had a 58 minute runtime
Episode 254 is "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout" with a 42 minute runtime
It also looks like the transcript for Episode 33 included a few different alternate endings etc. so instead of the 6000 words in season 2, just the core episode is closer to the average
I’ve been watching Peppa Pig in Russian and it’s been helping a lot. It’s hard to find Russian SpongeBob though because that’s my favourite cartoon.
I learned Spanish by watching "Los Simpson"... Sort of.
At the time, I only really knew 1-10 and Rojo/Verde/Azul.
Then I was forced to move to a Spanish speaking country and live with a family that didn't speak English AT ALL.
My Spanish proficiency isn't quite at a "fluent" level, but I learned to "fully" speak the language in about 9 months.
Being fully immersed in a language by force and watching an episode of The Simpsons a day (in both Spanish and English, then again in Spanish but with English subs)
(It also helped that the school's English teacher was willing to simultaneously teach me the reverse)
super
@OneWordataTime1 would this also work with videos games since your more engage with your target language?
when reading in a foreign language, should we write down new words and review them (for example with anki) or just extensively read?
sponge = burete (Romanian)
I don't want to brag or something, but I learned German from kids TV shows when I was a kid and nobody believed me for quite a while. Nowadays it's fairly common for children to learn English by watching CZcams kids (or other similar kids video platforms) in my country.
When I watch cartoons, I can understand the words, but then I can't remember them when I need to speak. Adult shows are much harder to understand as well. When I try to speak using the method you suggested from Elysse, I can't remember the words I need even though I know them. What do you suggest?
I see the Simpsons for learn english, and it is very useful, despite of level of language
You are spot on! By watching Kids TV in a foreign language we emulate the natural learning process of a child.
I've been watching anime for over a decade and only know ~30 words in jp
The dragon prince on netflix is pretty good. It's not a kids show like spongebob but more for middleschool or teens. Maybe it could be a good second show.
Did you cumulatively count across episodes?
It seems to me that you could get the 20 repetitions (I heard 12 from Paul Nation) could be repeated 3 or 4 times in each episode, so taking 5 episodes to acquire.
Exactly - this looks across episodes so depending on how common the word is you may see it 20x in one episode or more