Have you ever found yourself bored with learning English through books and exercises? Have you ever given up learning English as you keep trying over and over again but totally gain no results back? Have you ever feel lost in finding yourself a suitable learning pathway that can assist you in achieving certain improvements? If you are in the above-mentioned cases, why not try learning through English movies and TV shows? It may be a wise choice for you and a great method that can bring you colorful fruits beyond your furthest expectations. Why do we say so? Here are the reasons.
First, through watching a TV movie, you can learn new vocabulary that is commonly used in English daily conversations. In these films, you will hear the characters using slang or informal phrases that English learners can not easily see in books. Thanks to this, you can apply all of them into your practice and make your English conversations sound more natural, and make you sound more like native speakers. Second, not only does this method help you collect for yourself a large number of interesting English words, but it also teaches you how to put them in the right context. As each word is used in each different context, hence, only through watching movies can you grasp how to make grammatically correct sentences? Last but not least, pronunciation is the most significant skill that you can gradually improve thanks to English TV shows. As you are watching movies, you are practicing listening and speaking your skills, you can easily notice how the characters pronounce each word and imitate them to get the right pronunciation. Not to mention the fact that unlike learning through books and exercises, movies with their appealing content will never make you get boredom during the learning process. In the previous articles, Learn English Fun Way has shared with you the list of interesting movies, including animated ones so that you can make reference to them. However, there remains one movie that we save the best for the last, and we will share it with you in today’s writing. It is a British comedy television series called” Mind Your Language“. If you are an English learner, you really should not miss this film. So, what makes it so special? Let’s discover!
Why should you learn English with “Mind Your Language”?
Mind Your Language is a British comedy television series that premiered on ITV in late-1977. It was produced by London Weekend Television and directed by Stuart Allen. It had 4 serious with a total of 42 episodes. The show is set in an adult education college in London and focuses on English as a Foreign Language class taught by Mr. Jeremy Brown, portrayed by Barry Evans, who had to deal with a motley crew of foreign students.
In the movies, Jeremy Brown starts his new job as the teacher of English as a foreign language class and meets his students for the first time. A diverse group of ten foreign adult students in London, hailing from nine different countries in Europe and Asia. From this moment, a lot of funny situations happen as people of different countries with different social backgrounds, religions, and languages exist in the same classroom.
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“Mind Your Language” must be an ideal choice for English learners for two main reasons:
First, its content is funny, interesting and above all, it is really familiar to us. In the series, you will easily see the scenes in which there are conflicts and arguments between the students coming from different races (Chinese, Indian, French, Japanese, etc), the students also cheat in the exams, or the girls even flirt with the teacher. Probably, some of you may find yourself like a character in the movie, as all the characters are also English beginners that make the same mistakes as us (or even more). The content is so funny in each detail that sometimes, you cannot help laughing and you will totally become engaged in it. For example, here is a dialogue in Series 1 Episode 7 “The cheating game”:
Ali: I want to hear you say: “All Muslims are nice, kind and most wonderful persons”.
Ranjeet: If I am saying that, you’ll be lending me 10 pence?
Ali: If you are saying that, I will be giving you 10 pence.
Ranjeet: Very well. All Muslims are nice, kind, and wonderful persons.
Ali: Jolly good. (hands him the 10 pence)
Ranjeet: There’s only one thing: all Sikhs are very big liars!
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Second, through this series, you will be able to learn both pronunciation and grammar at the same time. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, pronunciation skill is certainly what you can improve by watching British or American TV shows; however, what makes ‘Mind Your Language‘ more special is that it also helps you learn English grammar. Specifically, the characters in the movie come from many areas all over the world, they are also English beginners that cannot help making grammatical mistakes while speaking. As Jeremy Brown, the English teacher in the movie helps them correct their errors, he is also helping us grasp the grammar rules in English. For example, here is a dialogue in Series 3 Episode 8 “What a tangled web”:
Mr. Brown: Giovanni, the correct word to describe a relative by marriage is “in-law”, as in “brother-in-law”, and not, as you put, “outlaw”.
Giovanni: It’s the same thing.
Mr. Brown: It is not the same thing. An outlaw is a bandit.
Giovanni: So’s my brother-in-law!
So, for the two above-mentioned causes, ‘Mind Your Language’ is a highly-recommended TV series for all of you, especially the English beginners.
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How to learn English through comedy series Mind Your Language:
To learn English effectively through watching movies in general, and through ‘Mind Your Language’ in particular, you should follow the below steps
- Step 1: Use subtitles in your language for the first time you watch the movie so that you can grasp its main content.
- Step 2: Use an English subtitle for the second time you watch the movie. This time, you should try to practice listening, and also write down the new words that you have not known yet, make a guess of their meanings when you are watching, and look up those words in the dictionary later.
- Step 3: Learn new vocabulary in the series, and watch it again without any subtitles at all. Try to imitate the native speakers in the movie as you are watching.
We hope you will watch “Mind Your Language” series immediately after reading this, and apply all the steps above to improve your English skills.
