Author Archives: lihong.huang

Have you come across a language you want to or need to learn? You might think of taking lessons for it, however, there is a faster way, that is watching movies, dramas from the language that you want to learn. This is not the best way to completely learn that language but an efficient way to pick up that language very quickly. English is my second language; but I picked it up quicker than people who came to America longer than me.  I have been a movie, drama and anime addict. I learned two other languages by watching movies, that is Japanese and Korean, I can understand a lot from a normal dialogue.

My question- Is watching movies an efficient way to language learning?

I will be conducting an experiment on people who are taking English lessons for second language learners.  I will assign one third of these people to a class that only watch English movies. Another one third of them will be watching movies and with lessons. The last third will be only taking lessons. My independent variable is watching movies and taking lessons, and my dependent variable is the results of their English listening, speaking and writing skills.

My hypothesis is that the group that watches movies with lessons will do better at all the skills tests, while the group with only watching movies will do well on the listening and speaking and the group with only lessons will do well in the writing.

The results of the experiment will benefit people who are trying to learn a language because one might think of taking lessons as the only way to learn a language, actually there is a more efficient and easy way for it, which is watching movies in the language that one wants to learn.

Watching movies would definitely have great impact on your listening skills. If you want to learn or understand the particular language, start with watching movies in that language, and then really try to learn the writing of that language.  Some recommendations, if you want to learn Japanese, watch   anime (cute); Korean, of course Korean drama (they are really good too); Chinese, for Cantonese, watch Hong Kong dramas and movies, for Mandarin, Taiwen or Chinese drama.  Good Luck!