English learners have a big advantage over learners of other languages: Hollywood is in America and it makes English-language movies. So, if you know English and you like movies, why don't you watch movies in English? You can have fun and, at the same time, learn a lot of English. If you are a fan of movies, you will notice that they are much better in the original. Watching a dubbed film will never be as good as watching the original version. Why? Because in the original version, the actor's voices are real. Everything is just like the director imagined. Learning English by watching movies is learning by input. First you get lots of correct English sentences into your head. Then you can imitate them and you can make your own sentences. And isn't that why you are learning English - to be able to make your own sentences? That is why watching movies (just like reading books) is such a great way to learn English. Of course, there are important differences between movies and books. With books, you learn how native speakers write in English. With movies, you learn how they speak English. You learn what words they use. When speaking, native speakers use words and phrases that you often won't find in a book. Spoken language is different from "book language". For example:
Book: The price of five dollars was acceptable, and I decided to purchase it.
Spoken: It was, like, five bucks, so I was like "okay".
In many movies, the dialog is like real spoken English. Movies also let you learn informal and slang words which are not yet in English dictionaries. For example, in a movie you might hear: Give me the freaking keys!, but you won't find the word "freaking" in a dictionary. You learn how they say these words. Movies let you improve your pronunciation, not only grammar and vocabulary. If you listen to Americans or Britons speaking English, you can learn to speak like they. You learn to understand spoken language. Movies are made for native speakers, not for learners of English. So the actors talk fast, just like native speakers talk in real life. How to learn as much as possible The difficulty of watching movies. You won't learn anything from the movie if you don't understand it. You probably won't enjoy it, either. :-(
This is one big problem with movies: They are much more difficult to understand than books. If you don't understand a word in a book, you can simply look it up in a dictionary, because the word is written there (you know its spelling). With a movie, you sometimes hear something, but you don't know what it is. Sometimes you don't even know if you've heard one word or two. There are other reasons why listening is more difficult than reading, and they all mean one thing: If you want to understand a movie, you have to know a lot of English words - and not only their spelling, but also their pronunciation. You can greatly improve your vocabulary by reading books, looking up words in your dictionary and repeating them. But even if you read 200 books in English, you would still not understand everything! There will always be some words that you didn't know before. And some of the dialog will be spoken very quickly and unclearly. (You should know that sometimes even Americans can't understand some of the dialog.) What to do when you don't understand something. If you are playing the movie from tape or CD, you can stop it whenever you don't understand a sentence. You can then play the sentence many times and try to look up words in a dictionary (which is not easy, because you have to guess the spelling!). Most CDs let you turn on subtitles. With subtitles, it is easy to look up difficult words in your dictionary, because you know the spelling. Learning techniques. What else can you do to learn from movies more effectively? The same things that you should do when reading books:
Pay attention to interesting things: new words, phrases, and grammar structures. Use your dictionary to learn about these interesting things. You can stop the movie to look up difficult words. You can also write down all the interesting sentences, and look them up later. But do use your dictionary!
Where to get movies in English?
Getting movies in English may be a problem if you are not in an English-speaking country. Most stores will have only movies dubbed in the local language. Dubbed movies help people who do not know English, but if you are an English learner, they are your greatest enemies:
How can you get original versions of movies? Here are some ideas that you can try:

" Your cable or satellite TV may have movie channels in English (for example, HBO is a popular channel which shows a lot of movies; unfortunately, it is not free).
" You can buy CDs or videotapes at specialized sites. (for example at our site.)
" In some countries, movie theaters (cinemas) show films with subtitles in the local language (and not dubbed movies). It is a good idea to watch them, especially if you can avoid reading the subtitles. :-)
















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