Learning English by Watching Movies Tips

Learning English by watching movies is learning by input.  First you get lots of correct English sentences into your head. Then you can imitate them and you can make your own sentences. And isn't that why you are learning English — to be able to make your own sentences? That is why watching movies (just like reading books) is such a great way to learn English.

Of course, there are important differences between movies and books. With books, you learn how native speakers write in English. With movies, you learn how they speak English.

• You learn what words they use. When speaking, native speakers use words and phrases that you often won't find in a book. Spoken language is different from "book language". For example:

  Book: The price of five dollars was acceptable, and I decided to purchase it.
  Spoken: It was, like, five bucks, so I was like "okay".

  In many movies, the dialog is like real spoken English. Movies also let you learn informal and slang words which are not yet in English dictionaries. For example, in a movie you might hear Give me the freaking keys!, but you won't find the word freaking in a dictionary.

• You learn how they say these words. Movies let you improve your pronunciation, not only grammar and vocabulary. If you listen to Americans or Britons speaking English, you can learn to speak like them.
• You learn to understand spoken language. Movies are made for native speakers, not for learners of English. So the actors talk fast, just like native speakers talk in real life.

Movie guides

There is a great alternative to subtitles. ESLnotes.com is a website which has "guides" to popular movies. A guide is a list of over 100 difficult sentences from a movie with explanations.

Now the most important thing: You first read the explanations; then you watch the movie. So, when you're watching the film, you already know the necessary vocabulary!

We think this is the best strategy for watching movies, because:

• It feels great to understand a movie in the original! It's very, very motivating when you learn a word, and then the knowledge of the word lets you enjoy the movie. It gives you a lot of pleasure — so you will want to learn more English vocabulary to understand even more.
• You don't have to stop the movie. (Or you have to stop it less frequently.) You can simply watch it and enjoy it.

A guide doesn't explain all the difficult sentences in the movie. But the explanations in the guide should be enough to help you understand what's happening in the movie.

 - Apple - Movie Trailers. Apple's official Quicktime Movie Trailer page with the newest and preview release trailers. You need to install the Quicktime player in order to view the trailers.

- Lingual.net - Learning English through Movies is a website where students learn English by watching authentic English language movies, which belong to a number of kinds.

Features:
• Movie categories: Drama, animation, cine-poetry, home made, documentary, travel, commercials, home and garden
• Each movie played in a separate window with or without subtitles and accompanied by a synopsis, a comprehension quiz and a full transcript
• Users can submit their own videos

- English Trailers is a special website which aims to help learners of English improve their ability to use the language by watching movie trailers, or commercials.

Features:
• A large database of movie trailers which can be sorted by alphabetical order, difficulty level or release date
• A variety of movie genres including action, adventure, comedy, documentary, drama, horror, romance, science fiction, suspense and thriller
• Plot summary, script and various activities for each movie trailer including warm-up speaking topics, a listening cloze test, a general language quiz and a web research guide
• Definitions and example sentences of potentially difficult vocabulary words

- Movies at Yahoo Browse new movie trailers, videos, and clips from Yahoo! Movies. Browse and watch new and popular trailers and video clips from Yahoo! Movies.