Fernando Arias, School Principal
As an educator parents have frequently asked me for advice on how to help their kids improve their English levels. Here’s one way: try watching and listening to English-language movies.
Although is not a good idea to learn English this way only, I would advise every English-language student, child or adult, to watch English-language movies in their free time for extra practice that you might not get in a classroom.
I particularly advise starting with well-known films. Pick films where the plot is fairly well-known to you or your kids, and you can follow the story’s plotline even with the audio off (in mute). So choose a movie you’ve already watched or a kid-friendly film if your English vocabulary is quite limited. However, if you speak English well or as you increase your proficiency, you might want to try pushing yourself towards watching movies with more complex dialogues.
You may greatly enhance your listening and speaking abilities in English by watching movies. Films are typically made for native English speakers rather than English language learners. As a result, the language is spoken fast, with natural accents and pronunciation, and with a wide variety of idioms and colloquial expressions, just as you would hear it in daily life living in an English speaking community.
Be encouraged to watch the movie again and again if there are any scenes you don’t understand, or just turn on the subtitles for a crucial sequence. If you have the time, you may even watch the entire movie (or just a portion of it) without subtitles at first, followed by subtitles in English, and if you still don’t understand it completely, you can watch it again with subtitles in your native language. You could significantly improve your listening comprehension, enrich your vocabulary and your pronunciation overtime.
It make take some time to get used to this, but it’s well worth the effort!