Fluent with "Friends"? The Role of Movies and TV in Learning English
Abstract
Movies and TV series can be useful in the ESL classroom as a way to keep students interested and help them understand content better. But can ESL students trust this media alone to help them toward their goal of English fluency? This project will focus on research done about the use of movies and TV series in order to learn English. In previous research, it was demonstrated that watching movies and TV series in their original English improved the listening test scores of ESL students (Metruk, 231) and that “the overall ability to process students' information increased significantly after the use of film media in the learning process.” (Rhovaidah, 573) We will take a close look at a YouTube channel called “Learn English with TV Series” and its affiliated video-based English course called “Fluent with Friends.” The YouTube channel takes scenes from popular movies and TV series and turns them into short English lessons, breaking down the dialogue and explaining vocabulary, pronunciation, and slang expressions. The course is specific to scenes from the popular TV series Friends and provides PDF downloads to accompany the video lessons. This material is marketed to those who want to watch movies and TV in English “without getting lost, without missing the jokes, and without subtitles.” But questions remain: How helpful are movies and TV in learning pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, listening skills, and social/cultural aspects of English? How useful is it really to learn informal expressions, jokes, and slang? The goal of this project is to contribute an answer to these questions.
Keywords
ESL, movies, TV, grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary
Fluent with "Friends"? The Role of Movies and TV in Learning English
CASB 104
Movies and TV series can be useful in the ESL classroom as a way to keep students interested and help them understand content better. But can ESL students trust this media alone to help them toward their goal of English fluency? This project will focus on research done about the use of movies and TV series in order to learn English. In previous research, it was demonstrated that watching movies and TV series in their original English improved the listening test scores of ESL students (Metruk, 231) and that “the overall ability to process students' information increased significantly after the use of film media in the learning process.” (Rhovaidah, 573) We will take a close look at a YouTube channel called “Learn English with TV Series” and its affiliated video-based English course called “Fluent with Friends.” The YouTube channel takes scenes from popular movies and TV series and turns them into short English lessons, breaking down the dialogue and explaining vocabulary, pronunciation, and slang expressions. The course is specific to scenes from the popular TV series Friends and provides PDF downloads to accompany the video lessons. This material is marketed to those who want to watch movies and TV in English “without getting lost, without missing the jokes, and without subtitles.” But questions remain: How helpful are movies and TV in learning pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, listening skills, and social/cultural aspects of English? How useful is it really to learn informal expressions, jokes, and slang? The goal of this project is to contribute an answer to these questions.