El cine para aprender inglés

Series and Films in English.

Apart from studying a language at school one of the funnest ways to do so is through watching television or going to the cinema to see a film.

As a person who is currently learning Spanish I find it very helpful to watch at least a half an hour of television in Spanish every day. This trains my ear in the new language and although I don´t understand a lot of what is being said it is still useful because it means that I am listening to a native speaker. Listening to a native speaker is essential because it teaches us how to pronounce words correctly.

Sometimes after listening to so much of a foreign language I automatically start to think in that language. This is why it is a good idea to watch television in English. You will hear lots of words that you already know and you will see how they can be used in different contexts. Your vocabulary will increase as a result of this too because you will see the person on screen talking about a particular object or place or person and these nouns and adjectives that are used can go into your repertoire.

When I watch television in a foreign language I like to have subtitles with my language. I find this very important because sometimes the speaker speaks too fast for me to understand what they are saying or if I hear a word that I don´t recognise I simply refer to the subtitles and then I have another word to add to my vocabulary.
This process can be done with any television series or film in English so I suggest you choose something that perhaps you are already quite familiar with watching in a dubbed version. In this way you will already understand what is going on and can concentrate more on the sound than on the subtitles.

It is also important to pick something that interests you. The learning process for anything is always made easier when you enjoy what you are doing. If the series or film bores you then you will learn a lot less because you will find it difficult to pay attention but if it is interesting then you will learn much more because you will stay focused.

Here in Barcelona most television sets have the option to change the language back to the original version. In this case why not try this. Pick a television series and watch it in its original language with subtitles in your own language.
Some of the series that I like to watch are ‘Friends’, ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and some reality shows. As I said before it is important to choose programmes that you like, so you don´t have to watch the ones I have listed. These are the shows that I like to watch. I am familiar with their content too, so it makes it easier for me to understand in the foreign language.

G. Harman