Movies or series

Students frequently ask me how they can improve their listening comprehension and vocabulary. They often want to know which movies I recommend. I suggest, instead, that they watch TV series. When you watch a movie, you hear a lot of new words, this is good. But you only hear them in that movie, so it is hard to recognize and to understand when you encounter them in conversations, books, the news, and in other movies and TV shows.

For this reason, I advise choosing a TV series that interests you. TV series tend to use the same core vocabulary again and again in all, or in most of, their episodes. When you watch a TV series, you will see many episodes, and this means that you will hear the same core words many times. You will hear them spoken by a few different characters, with different accents (maybe) and in a variety of situations. So, you will more likely be able to recognize and understand these words and phrases when they are spoken in daily conversations and in other shows and movies.

Lastly, another advantage of TV series over movies is that if you want to learn new words from a movie, you have to watch that same movie over and over, and you might get bored. But, when you watch a TV series, you can hear the same core vocabulary in different episodes, so you may not have to watch the same episode again and again.

I hope that you think this blog has given you some good advice. Please send me your opinion and questions to jhalsband@eslforall.com,