However, watching English dramas and American dramas plays an irreplaceable role in oral English learning. Ah Hu recommends several most efficient ways to learn English by watching drama!
1. Choose dramas with daily themes.
Since drama is chosen as the blueprint of language learning, we should choose something close to life. The most typical is the life sitcom Friends and Modern Family, with an episode of about 20 minutes. It is very convenient to listen and imitate repeatedly this time.
Suitable for beginners: Friends (classic drama), Desperate Housewives (articulate), Modern Family (more difficult than Friends, you can learn American culture).
After the level is improved, choose a drama American drama to practice. Compared with scenes, dialogues between characters and topics involved, sitcoms are more complicated, with more orthodox and authentic expressions and rich vocabulary. For example, our day is more suitable for advanced study.
Recommend several good stories: Grey's Intern, Suspect Tracking, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents, Big and Small Lies.
Accordingly, some plays are not suitable for learning English (but can be eaten or relaxed): Bankrupt Sisters (speaking fast is suitable for eating), Deadly Women (with good plot), Sherlock, The Big Bang Theory and Game of Thrones.
2. watch the drama and grind your ears.
There will be many English expressions in the play that can't be learned in books. These are to be accumulated and memorized, and they should be skilled enough to listen accurately.
Therefore, you should take proper notes when watching the play. Use two colors of pens to remember new words and short sentences respectively.
Don't worry about watching the next episode after recording, but watch it several times:
1 Choose bilingual subtitles for the first time and learn the content for the first time, so that you can enjoy watching the drama as usual.
Turn off the Chinese translation for the second time, leaving only English lines. Try to understand the scene dialogue of the characters in the play, and then you will find some authentic but common and commonly used expressions.
The third time is important. Write down the contents and new words you didn't understand last time, or save screenshots for reference and accumulation; Every once in a while, you can go back and listen to it a few times, and then deepen your impression.
The last time I watched the video, there were no subtitles. I focused on what I didn't understand before, and followed it repeatedly until I understood it.
3. Imitate and practice oral English.
China's biggest obstacle to learning English is pronunciation. Chinese syllables are all independent, and a sentence sounds like an ellipsis. English syllables are interrelated, words are pronounced coherently and sound like dashes.
In short, Chinese is not read continuously, but English is read continuously, so when watching a drama, you should not only understand but also imitate the pronunciation inside, and read the words in a sentence into a line, instead of jumping out word by word like Chinese.
Practicing oral English with the dialogue in the play is the best material. Because after listening to it many times, my ears are very sensitive to correct pronunciation, so I just need to read aloud and record the dialogue text by myself. When I listen again, I will notice the gap with the original, mark it and polish it repeatedly.