Tips for learning English by watching movies

Watching English movies such as American dramas or British dramas is a way for us to learn English or improve our English level. The following is what I have compiled for your reference!

The first step: first read the Chinese and English synopsis of the movie online, so that you can at least have an understanding of the plot, and then Watch it without any subtitles.

Step 2: Read the English subtitles while watching the movie. If you encounter something you don’t understand, be sure to write it down.

Step 3: Listen carefully. Try to understand every word, using the methods of dictation, following reading, and listening and reading.

Step 4: Imitation After you understand what is inside, you must imitate it completely, and treat yourself as an actor in it.

Step 5: Choose a better translated Chinese subtitle for comparison, see where there are any problems, and make corrections in time.

Specific operation method

The first step:

1. Film selection: it can be said that it determines the quality of the learning effect

Elementary Students, I suggest that when choosing a movie, you should follow the principles of light subject matter, simple content, and strong visual explanation of language.

This will help everyone guess the meaning of the language through the movie scenes and avoid the fatigue caused by too many incomprehensible words and looking for help from dictionaries and other means during learning. .

Recommended movies: Mainly Disney cartoons such as Sound of Music, Finding Nemo, Lion King, Beauty and Beast, etc. Garfield

Intermediate students, in addition to learning the language itself, It is also necessary to improve the understanding of English cultural background knowledge, so it is very important to choose some historical-themed films for study.

Recommended movies: Forrest Gump, Heaven Earth, Troy, Patriot, Brave Heart, Gone With the Wind, etc. These movies are only for learning cultural background and are not recommended for learning pronunciation, vocabulary, and communication

Students who are more confident in their abilities can choose Sex and the City, Friends and other popular soap operas. , learn some more authentic spoken expressions through the plot to make your English more authentic. Improve oral listening

Students who are very good at English can watch movies of other types and themes, such as movies about politics, war, business, crime, gangster themes, etc. Remember that they are just a general watch, but Watch every movie at least three times.

2. Check movie information: I recommend two websites in Chinese and English, mainly to check the plot synopsis

3. When watching it for the first time, many students were confused because it did not have any subtitles. The sad thing is that we are not used to it. We have become accustomed to treating ourselves as a weak group in English. As long as we watch English movies, we automatically rely on Chinese subtitles. My advice to everyone is, don’t care about the results, don’t care about how much you understand or understand. , the process of watching must be pleasant both physically and mentally, and focus on what you understand to gather a sense of accomplishment. Many people give up because they have no sense of accomplishment!!!!

It is recommended that everyone use kmplayer The player plays movies downloaded from the Internet or powerdvd plays purchased DVDs. Both software can adjust subtitles freely

Step 2:

1. This step is the most time-consuming It’s time-consuming and labor-intensive

It’s time-consuming and labor-intensive because you have to keep stopping to look up words, and keep stopping to write down phrases, slang, sentence patterns, expressions that you don’t know, and you are constantly being cruel I was hit by the fact that I couldn’t understand or understand!

2. So what exactly should be done in this step?

First of all, write down all the things you don’t understand in one place. Something called a movie study book

After this step is done, it’s time to understand them, but there’s a problem here. Not everything you don’t understand in the movie needs to be mastered, but which ones must be mastered. Which ones do you know and do? If you study by yourself, it is difficult to determine and grasp the key points

For example, in "Forrest Gump", Forrest Gump expresses his great love for eating chocolate. When he said that he could eat "one and a half million pieces of chocolate", I could eat about a million and a half of these. The word "million" in this sentence means a large amount, not that Forrest Gump has ever People, through the analysis of the usage of "million", you will have a more intuitive understanding of the use of exaggerated tone in Americans' daily language to express large quantities. It is difficult to realize this when self-study. Most people understand it as millions

The third step:

1. Needless to say, the biggest advantage of this method is that it can Exercise your listening skills. This kind of movie listening is not as dry as listening to tapes. You can feel the meaning of the lines through logical reasoning of the development of events, or you can watch the movie several times, and you will naturally have a feel for the lines after you are familiar with the content.

Have you noticed that the listening and film listening in CET-4 and CET-6 exams are nothing compared to the big ones?

2. We only talk about intensive listening here, but you must also do extensive listening and intensive listening. It requires dictation, listening and reading, and finally repeating at the same time. This process needs to be practiced by yourself

3. Regarding the three elements of listening: pronunciation, vocabulary, and reaction speed, you can use movies to handle them all. Let’s talk about pronunciation first: it includes not only the pronunciation of words, but also many pronunciation deformations such as the continuous reading of vocabulary and idioms in real communication, detonation, weakening, voicing, stress, and abbreviation. And the movie encompasses all of these aspects. There is another problem here, because pronunciation is the most troublesome problem for Chinese people. We provide you with some guidance in this regard, but practice depends on the individual, and pronunciation really needs to be practiced hard.

The importance of pronunciation: If you don’t have pronunciation, don’t mention anything else.

Then let’s talk about vocabulary. In terms of vocabulary, Teacher Bobby’s rolling listening and reading method can completely solve this problem.

But just mastering vocabulary is not enough. There are still many things to learn, so the next step is reaction speed: including slang, colloquialisms, thinking, etc. Movies are of course the best medium. People who don’t understand are often It's because there are a lot of slang and colloquialisms, or you don't understand some words. And these things are all related to culture.

How to improve English listening and speaking by watching movies

Many students have different opinions on watching movies to learn English! Some students reported that the effect is very good! It is entertaining and educational. You can learn English and watch movies at the same time; but at the same time, some students report that watching movies is not effective in learning English, and they do not find that their listening and speaking have improved. Therefore, today we will talk about how to learn English by watching movies.

In fact, students’ listening skills were not initially improved by watching movies.

Have you ever seen a 1-year-old child who doesn't understand anything and just watches TV in front of the TV? So for many friends, even using movies to learn English requires a certain level of English proficiency.

First of all, when watching movies, I suggest you watch the ones from CC6, which are dubbed in Chinese and subtitled in Chinese, and have nothing to do with English. Only then should you start watching the English version. Of course, you can also ask for subtitles at the beginning. But one thing that needs to be emphasized here is that listening to movies and listening to news are definitely not the same thing. Even if you listen to BBC and VOA 100%, there will definitely be things you can’t hear in movies. First, because the characters have all kinds of weird pronunciations, and they all have weird pronunciations. The second reason is that in the news, formal terms are used, but in movies, there are more slang terms, which can scare people to death when they speak fast.

So if you choose to use movies to practice listening, it is recommended that you have a listening foundation, at least the VOA level should be able to understand 70%. You can choose a favorite movie that you never tire of, and watch it several times. If you encounter something you don’t understand, pull it back and listen to it again. If you still don’t understand it after listening to it for more than five times, stop listening and just hang up. Look at the subtitles to see what people are saying. After you see the subtitle, analyze why you didn’t understand it. If you clearly know the words, but you just don’t understand them, then it’s probably because of problems such as swallowing the syllables. These problems are easy to solve. If you learn how to read them yourself, you will be able to understand them next time. It is still a speech recognition problem.

If you decide to use a movie to improve your listening, then you must remember that the purpose of watching this movie is not for fun, but to practice listening, so don’t be too happy after watching it and just give up afterward. If you read it all the way with the subtitles, it will have no effect. No one is used to watching nude movies without subtitles at first. You have to persevere. Even if you half understand, half guess, and half understand, you have to finish it. Watch it a few times, listen to it a few times, and you will understand. Then watch external subtitles.

As for what people often say, the English proficiency is okay but still can’t understand. Generally speaking, it is a lack of analysis of the picture. In the trailer of only about two minutes, it is very clear. An inexplicable line may suddenly be inserted. At this time, if you can carefully analyze the background scene, you can analyze a lot of the plot. Because in every trailer, there are always one or two sentences that I can't understand. This is a lack of practice. Practice more and more.

There is no shortcut to improving language skills. There are shortcuts, and there are roads and hard work as the path. The four abilities of listening, speaking, reading and writing are all hard skills. If you don't practice hard, you will not make substantial improvements. I remembered a classic saying from a teacher at XDF. The biggest shortcut to improving ability is to work hard, but hard work is the most painful, so few people can take the shortcut. So, people actually know how to improve, but they still have high expectations and ask others what to do. When they get an answer, they are disappointed and blame others for not teaching the "True Sutra" to you. But in fact, there are no true scriptures or secrets in the world. The only thing that exists is practical dedication day by day. If you could worry less and pay more, your hearing would have improved a long time ago.

So, quickly grab any material, as long as it is something the native speaker said, and start practicing. Time is precious.

Hard work counts, everything else is bullshit.

Here are some specific learning methods for learning English by watching movies:

For the first time, watch it with Chinese subtitles

Watch it again to get the same sense of English as before When I came back, the so-called feeling was that the inner monologue was always in English, and the first reaction to speaking was also in English.

The second time, add the English letters again

The English subtitles at the beginning will be very good, but the later ones will get worse and worse. It is really impossible to watch, it is just a fake script. After watching it for the second time, I could basically understand it, and I could help to proofread the subtitles on the DVD. During the proofreading process, my listening ability itself was improved.

The third time, remove the subtitles. The third time is the most painful and the most sublimating stage.

There is an advantage to removing letters. It is like losing a walking stick. The sound will not be reflected in your mind like looking at English letters. You also have to think about, oh, what does this word come from? Because many times when a word we have mastered suddenly appears, our thinking will stop for a while. Just at this stop, new content rushes in again, and you lose sight of the other. In the end, you don’t remember the previous ones. , and forgot to listen to it later. I was very frustrated at the beginning, because my confidence in the first two times was completely destroyed by him, but it doesn’t matter, is it normal? In this place, you have to listen to it over and over again, so It would be better if you buy a DVD player. It has the A-B repeat function, which can repeat the sentence you want to listen to indefinitely. There will always be a moment when you remember it!