Take a bucket of popcorn and... Learn English!

Nowadays, we have at our disposal an infinite number of series on various topics: action, love, adventure, history... And with all of them, we can learn new vocabulary to use in our lives.

Watching these series in our native language can serve us as entertainment, but if we change them to English, we can enjoy different benefits. For example, it helps us to better understand the language and practice listenings. In addition, by having subtitles, we can more easily recognize the sounds and pronunciations of words. Without evading the amount of new vocabulary that we learn and the way to express it.

To get started with these practices, some tips should be followed. You have to start little by little, putting the original audio and subtitles in Spanish. When you think you are already mastering it, change the subtitles to English. The most important thing is to lose the fear of not understanding the dialogues! 😎

Some of the series with which you can start, and which at the same time are very entertaining, are the following:

• Game of thrones. Surely many of you have already seen it, but in your language. For those who don't know, it's about the fight between different dynasties for the Iron Throne. Therefore, it's perfect to learn war vocabulary and also vocabulary from the fantasy world, in addition serving to practice listening comprehension, thanks to the accents of the characters.

• Skins. It's an adolescent series that relates the problems of a group of friends: drugs, sex, alcoholism, anorexia... With this series, you will be able to learn colloquial and everyday vocabulary. The language of young people of the moment. In addition, you will empathize with each of the characters, and you will even drop a tear. This is a point in favor of working on feelings.

• Black mirror. It's a science fiction series where the top of how technology affects society is mainly covered. Each chapter is independent of each other, so they could be conceived as small films. It's perfect for acquiring new concepts related to technology or the problems that sometimes entails. With this series, you will draw many conclusions...

• Peaky Blinders. It's the most famous series about gangsters. It's set in Birmingham in 1919. In this case, this series already has a higher level of English, so it would be aimed at those who have a little more command of the language. The accents of some actors are quite closed, but based on practice, they can be understood without problem.

• Vikings. Another of the most famous series of the moment, set in Scandinavia in the 700s. This series is full of action, and with it you will learn about Norse history and mythology. Also, the actors speak very slowly and clearly, so many times you won't even need the help of the subtitles.

• Sense8. I can't explain much the plot of this series, because I would make many spoilers, but it has been a series that had a great acceptance and at the same time, a great rejection. The actors come from many different countries, there's even a well-known Spanish one. So, thanks to this, you can hear many types of accents.

And that's all! I hope that list of series has helped you, and that you can improve your English with them.

Leave me a comment if you have already seen one, or if you want to recommend another one that isn't there! 😁😍

Improve your English day by day

Hi! Like you, I want to learn English, and all of us know that there are so many different ways to learn it! For example, the secondary school classes of English where we only learn grammar and where we couldn't speak most of the time, are very different to the classes of our degree, which are more interactive and motivating. Don`t you think? So now, I am going to talk to you about a ludic way to learn English.

A few years ago, if you wanted to improve your pronunciation or your listening, the best way to do it was meeting with an English native or going to any English speaking country. Both of them are fantastic ideas, but maybe you don’t have enough money or time. Now, there are many options! As you know, nowadays all of us have access to Internet so we can watch TV series, films and listen music in English.

Instead of wasting your time watching TV series in Spanish, invest your time watching them in English. At the beginning, it can be a bit difficult, so I recommend you to watch again a film that you have already seen in Spanish. In my case, I have done this with my favourite TV series: Utopia, but you can choose your preferences. It is not recommendable to watch it with Spanish subtitles because although we don’t want, our eyes will be reading the text. Therefore, if you choose to watch it with subtitles take care of being in English!

Try to watch films or TV series from different places and pay attention to the different ways of talking. For example, the TV series that I had talked about, Utopia is from England so it has Britain accent, like Sherlock or Black Mirror, but if you watch Sons of Anarchy, you will notice that the accent is not the same because it’s American. Orphan Black is from Canada and 13 reasons why is from Australia.

   

Now, think about how many songs you have listened in English. Have you ever payed attention to their lyrics?  Do it! Look for the lyrics on the Internet, and besides of enjoying the music you will understand better the song and improve your English. It can be a bit boring but there are alternatives, for example in the page https://es.lyricstraining.com/ you can complete the lyrics of the songs while they are playing. Try it, it’s very funny!

If you introduce English in your day to day pleasure activities, you will notice that you will learn without realising it! 

LEARNING ENGLISH TROUGH AUDIO-VISUAL MEDIA

Using audio-visual media like videos with songs, films and cartoons is a good way to learn or to improve our English as adults but also for children. At this post I’m going to talk about the case of children.

    We have a lot of audio-visual means, (a lot of them free), to learn English and I think using them in class is a good way to make the language learning more attractive for the students and it is a very useful tool to improve their comprehension. There are for example, a lot of free videos with songs for studying and going over the alphabet, the numbers, verbs, actions etc. made for different ages and levels that are very useful, for improving the pronunciation of the children. Besides, some of those videos can be subtitled or are already subtitled.

     We can also see cartoons and subtitled films at class, that in my opinion are very useful materials for learning English, mostly if we put the subtitles in English, but in this case it will be easier to start with the mother tongue of the pupils due to we are working with small girls and boys.

    I think that those tools have a big utility for us like pre-primary teachers because at early ages, children have a big capacity for learning and this is why childhood is the best stage to introduce new languages to them. Kids loves watching films and cartoons, so why not doing it in English? Some people could think that this is too much for young boys and girls but in many other places, like Portugal, people use to see television, above all films, in their original version with subtitles since they were kids and it is proved that with this simply method they have a very good comprehension and it is easier for them to learn a new language. With pre-primary students we have to be careful because they can’t read yet, so, for example a whole movie in English would be too much for them but we can start with cartoons that have some words or some sentences in English and then make it more complicated.

     When the kids can read, we could continue using different types of audio-visual media in class to improve their English, specially their comprehension but also their speaking and pronunciation too, for example listening to some song, watching films and after asking them questions about those films, etc. Besides, they can use those resources also at home, which is a good reinforcement. 

Here you have some interesting links:

I hope you liked my post. You can make any comment if you want!