Does wathcing English movies help us to improve our English?

As we know English is the most common language uesd to communicate with people around the world. Some people have to study it to go to college and university, others just learn it to be able to understand the English so that they can travel to any place and share their thoughts, ideas and knowledge easily.We also know that many people can read and understand it but unable to speak fluently and write their thoughts clearly. Many language scientists and teachers have been doing research on how to build a effective tool for everyone to learn other languages easily. For right handed people the language center is Left Brain and for left handed its right brain. So they examined right or left brain of volunteers with the help of PET scanning and divided them into different groups .Those candidates who just watched movie without active participation for several weeks could not improve speaking skill significantly. The other group who wathced same movie several times improved speaking skill a little bit more. But those participants who were active in writing and speaking with others improved their skills very significantly. The fact that every participant's brain activity examined by PET scanning at the end of experiment was equal. So learning language, probably, depends on individual basis rather than the activity of our brain. It's really hard for most of the people with age above 25 years to learn new things and incorporate and use it rapidly. Perhaps, our neuronal system in brain is very rigid to learn new things.But once it gets many repetition or hard work , it gets molded to any shape to receive the new things.

The source of information is from different website and reasearch articles, and there is no common conclusion from them. I just made it my version of conclusion. What is your opinion aout it???

Definitely watching English movies help a lot to improve the listening skill. But for speaking, as mentioned by teacher and learners in MyEC, discussing about the movie with friends or writing reviews or criticism on it are very important to take advantage of movies. Plainly watching movies is a passive process.
Writing skill depends on our level of knowledge and our way of presentation and intellectuality. There are many native English speakers whose writing skill is not that standard. Likewise there are many tourist guides who speak very fluent English but can not write properly. In the same way, people are very fluent speaker in their native language but most of them are not good in writing. From my observation and experience, I can say that the most difficult part is writing.
American people speak English without much effort. They use more idioms and phrases in day to day conversation. The spoken language is in some way different than written English. This is more or less comparable to in Movies. It’s true that the dialogues in movies are rather dramatic, concise and written by big writer.
We have heard that there are many learners who improved English appreciably by watching movies. On the contrary other states that it takes a lot of energy and time.

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Comments

Abdrakhmanova Anel May 13, 2010 10:27

It was very interesting topic for me. But I should say that films develop only listening skills.
ginky pabingwit March 14, 2010 5:56

hello.your topic helps me on my research about american movies and there impact on how to improve our speaking skills.
aminudin March 8, 2010 15:01

hello, everyone.
if you don't mind please send me some examples of english movies.i want to see that for improving my english skills............thanks.
Mari March 7, 2010 16:43

Hello everyone! i think for learning english it's not so importan age as wish and hardworking!! nothing is possible, eventually. so i think first of all u may have base,(grammar,rules and so on)and then for improving english vocabulary reserve(fund) to be able to speak fluently. I can i advice u to use my practice.when i read new articles,or dialoges, i write out unknown words,look up them in a dictionary and then learn them,and then use in another sentance(when i'm writting to someone) so this way adding my fund.So and what about films.i think it's a little difficult to learn english by films.maybe people who are who knows english fluently, it wiil improve their speaking skills.it's my opinion,but it's not bad version.
Tiago Ruaro March 1, 2010 16:40

Hello guys,

I agree with you. It's important use different tools to improve a second language what include movies, podcast etc. And about age, when I was younger I couldn't learn English. Now, I'm 32, and I can understand better...I guess...hahahahaha.
Monika March 1, 2010 8:04

I agree with Anastasia,about watching films with subtitle can help.
I love to watch films,not just for the sake of learning vocabulary in context,-which is important,-but I also enjoy to hear the actor's own voice,and pronounciation.
As for me,I prefer to watch them,copied on a dvd,so I can rewind back to the critical sentence,I want to hear once again,or several times,perhaps,to imprint it(on my brain).
Without subtitle is also good,but I'm reassured better,when I know it for sure,what's going on.
Thanks for this topic.:)
Anastasia Chashchina March 1, 2010 7:20

In my opinion, of course watching movies can help us to enhance our listening skills. It is also useful to improve our vocabulary, but I think it is necessary to watch a film with subtitles.
daniel February 28, 2010 1:18

Definitely watching English movies help a lot to improve the listening skill. But for speaking, as mentioned by teacher and learners in MyEC, discussing about the movie with friends or writing reviews or criticism on it are very important to take advantage of movies. Plainly watching movies is a passive process.
Writing skill depends on our level of knowledge and our way of presentation and intellectuality. There are many native English speakers whose writing skill is not that standard. Likewise there are many tourist guides who speak very fluent English but can not write properly. In the same way, people are very fluent speaker in their native language but most of them are not good in writing. From my observation and experience, I can say that the most difficult part is writing.
American people speak English without much effort. They use more idioms and phrases in day to day conversation. The spoken language is in some way different than written English. This is more or less comparable to in Movies. It’s true that the dialogues in movies are rather dramatic, concise and written by big writer.
We have heard that there are many learners who improved English appreciably by watching movies. On the contrary other states that it takes a lot of energy and time.
Thao Hoang February 27, 2010 16:11

Hi there,

For me, watching English movies indeed helps me to improve my English, as a learner and a teacher, I can say it helps a lot with listening and speaking skills, I often ask my students to watch english movies if they want to improve their listening skills, why not? for two purposes; learning and entertaining at the same time
Cheers
Nadira February 27, 2010 13:49

what type of movies do you suggest

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