5 Tips For Those Who Want To Learn English From TV Shows And Movies

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A great way to immerse yourself in a language, hone its listening comprehension and expand your vocabulary.

The way to learn English from TV shows and movies combines several invaluable benefits. First of all, you get to know not literary, but real spoken language. In addition, the video sequence complements speech with an audiovisual context: combinations of intonations, gestures, facial expressions and other details on the screen involve several of the viewer's senses at once, rivet his attention, and improve the memorization of words. Finally, you can just enjoy the process itself.

At the same time, it must be admitted that even this method requires considerable effort on the part of the student. And without hard work on yourself, you will not be able to learn the language.

I hope these simple yet helpful tips will help you organize a pleasant learning experience and achieve real results.

1. Do not try to learn the language from TV shows and films from scratch

Without basic knowledge of grammar and a basic stock of foreign words, it is hardly worth getting to know the language from works of art. You simply will not be able to isolate the necessary constructions and individual words from the speech you hear and organize them without knowing the rules by which all these elements interact with each other.

Start with structured learning materials: instructor-led sessions, textbooks, courses.

They methodically, step by step, explain how the language works and form an understanding of its features. Explore a few textbooks or courses, practice the rules and vocabulary learned from them with exercises, and then continue learning the most common and useful words. Learn common idioms, phrasal verbs, and other structures separately.

Only having received basic knowledge of the language, start learning it through TV series and films.

2. Choose videos that are interesting to you and correspond to the current level of language proficiency

Choose TV shows and movies consistently: start with simple words and gradually increase the difficulty. If you do not grasp the meaning of most of the lines, then this video is not for you yet. Look for something simpler, and then go back to the complex. Children's films and animation work well for a start. When you want to watch your favorite movie, do it in English. If you already know the plot, it will be much easier to perceive the foreign language version.

Also consider the pronunciation and cultural background of the film. If you are targeting American English, see films from the United States, if you prefer British - choose something filmed in England. When you feel confident in one of the variants of the language, fill in the gaps in the knowledge of the other.

Plus, learn from TV shows and movies that you really enjoy. This approach will increase your motivation and involvement in the educational process and positively affect your results.

3. Use subtitles correctly

Start with double subtitles. If you are not in the know, for one video, you can synchronously output two text streams in different languages. So, by choosing English and your native language, you can always compare the literary translation and the original text of the lines, when you do not understand the pronunciation of the actors or hear unfamiliar words.

To use double subtitles, find a suitable player. For example, where this option is enabled in the settings. Just download the pre-text files for both languages to, or any other resource. Online services also seem to show double subtitles and do not require downloading anything.

As you progress in learning a language, try increasingly to get by with only English subtitles.

Include translation in extreme cases, when you cannot guess the meaning even from the context. This is the only way, apart from your native language, you will be able to immerse yourself in English as much as possible.

Turn off all subtitles when you reach a high level. Use them only when absolutely necessary. This tactic will help improve your listening comprehension.

4. Do not be lazy to come back and analyze difficult moments

Rewind and revisit scenes that you cannot understand the first time. Listen to the speech to catch the subtleties of pronunciation. If this greatly spoils the viewing pleasure, record the time of the moments requiring attention and revisit them after the end of the video. Or use the video bookmark feature for that. You can also slow down speech that is too fast by slightly adjusting the playback speed. All these options can be found in the menu of the aforementioned KMPlayer player.

5. Write down and regularly repeat new phrases and words

Purposefully study unfamiliar words, not just passively pass videos with or without subtitles through you. Otherwise, the speed of vocabulary replenishment will remain extremely low, even if you start watching a film a day. Write out new words and constructions you hear in the movies, study them, and repeat them regularly. Modern vocabulary improvement will help you with this.

If you want to minimize interruptions for writing out words or reading subtitles while watching, learn unfamiliar vocabulary from a particular video in advance. You can quickly extract new words from subtitles using the WordsFromText service.