learning with movies

How to improve your listening and vocabulary by watching movies

Would you like to improve your English by watching movies? Then this English Show is for you. Story Paul joins us on The English Show and he has lots of great tips to help you.

Find out how to select the right movies, what to do about captions and much much more.

He’s also given us a checklist with lots of resources so you can find out where to view movies and download transcripts. Download it here: StoryPaul-ImproveYourEnglishWithMovies


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Improve your English by watching movies video script

Come on everybody, it’s going to start.

Well that’s true. But you know it took… Who did that?
Hey! Hello everybody. Welcome to the English Show. I’m Vicki and I’m an English teacher and I’m based in Philadelphia, and with me is my good friend Fluency who’s over in Paris.
Yes, I’m in Paris, I’m a teacher, I’m a trainer, I’m a knowledge entertainer. I like to help you practice English with ryhme and rhythm. And we’ve got some great tips for you in this English Show about how to learn English with movies.
Yeah. And we’re going to be joined by Story Paul.
Whoo! Story Paul.
But there’s one other person who you should meet, who’s my husband Jay, who’s working away behind the scenes to make this happen.
Hi guys! It’s great to see everybody. I’m looking forward to this exciting show and seeing Story Paul in just a little while.
But the other thing I’m hoping can happen is I’m hoping that Jay can bring me to Paris. Oh I hope so too. Because I’d love to come and see you in Paris.
Would you? Come on over.

How am I going to get to Paris this week Jay?
Oh this week I’m going to turn you into a helicopter. A helicopter? Yes, put your hands out. This is hard work. I’m here!
Well that was exciting. Hey! I’m here. I’ve made it. Vicki! Fist bump. Or maybe I should ask you for a helicopter hand pump. That was really impressive.
I know. It was a lot of hard work, you know.
I can imagine.
Yes, sometimes you come and it’s really easy but this time you made a lot of effort. But you know something else that can be hard work is learning English, so on the English Show we like to make it fun work.
Yeah, it’s all about practice. And we’ve got a guy with us today who’s all into fun work of learning English with movies and he’s going to give us some good tips on how to do that.
So let’s go and meet him.
Yes. Paul, are you there? Story Paul in the house! Welcome!
Hey Vicki, Fluency and Jay! So nice to be here with you guys. Thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
How are you doing? And where are you?
Hey, I’m doing great and I am in Buenos Aires, Argentina on the other side of the world where it’s still kind of warm, we’re still coming out of summer, in a big bustling city and just having a great time joining you guys.
Paul, we can see that you’re a movie fan from all the posters up behind you. Our students want to know how can we learn English with movies. Have you got some good tips for us?
I do. You know that’s really what I love to do most. I love working with context based techniques and stories of course, and working with movies is one of my favourite things, so absolutely. You know movies provide learners with authentic language, and they also provide them with a memory tool because they’re stories. So the first thing learners want to do is they want to choose a movie, a genre – right genre is science fiction or roamnce or action or drama – that they like or choose a movie based on an actor or an actress that they happen to know. That’s the first step so something that will provide engagement for them.
OK, so the first thing to do is to amke sure you like it. Find something you like.
Great! Then what?
OK. Once you know that, choose a short clip. Right now in the resources I’ve provided some great places where you can do that. You don’t really need to watch a long movie to learn some language from it and a short two or three minute clip like a scene or a trailer is just fantastic.
OK, so the next tip is keep it short. And Paul has given us some resources and we’re going to be putting them on our Facebook group. Right. And putting them in there so make sure you check that out later. And I’ll put them in the details below as well. So we’ve got some tips for where to go and find movies.
And trailers, as you said.
Trailers are good, aren’t they, because they’re very short.
Yeah. Absolutely. Trailers are very short. They’re very nice just to get an idea of a basic story and getting a few quick lines, which is usually what they include. now…
Yes, go ahead.
OK, I have another question. Why are movies good for learning English? What…Why are they useful for practice?
Well you know that’s really… that’s the jackpot question. Movies provide three things. They provide learners with a really natural access to speaking patterns. Right. When we talking about speaking patterns, what we want to do is we want to differentiate that from the type of writing-style textbook English which we learn initially, which is necessary, but as we advance, it’s nice to get a feeling for how people really speak in the real world – with interruptions, and fillers and sometimes repeating themselves and changing directions. And movies provide this and provide learners with a great opportunity to listen to this again and again. But that’s not it. They also provide other things and I can go into that as well.
Great. Well, I think before you go into it, we should have something else like… conversation time.
Is it comnversation time? We’ve got a conversation for you now which is about me and Jay going to the movies. OK great. All right. And at the movies we had a problem. So… Did you?
Your task is to listen and watch and find out what problem we had. OK. So we’re gonna watch you and Jay at the movies, and during the clip, we need to try and notice a problem you had.
OK, it’s not actually at the movies, but we’re talking about it. We’re talking about a trip to the movies.
You’re talking about a trip to the movies. Got it. OK!
We went to the cinema last night. Jay’s phone rang during the movie.
It was only for a couple of seconds before I turned it off.
It rang twice.
You do not look happy. It was a very, very short conversation. Based on a true story I imagine. Based on true life. You bet! Authentic. Aunthentic. Yes. Now you’re looking at the script here for what we said, but some words are blanked out. Do you know the missing words? So let’s have a look at them. OK. We went to the cinema last night. Notice I said ‘cimema’. That’s because I’m British. But Fluency, I think you’d say something else there wouldn’t you? Definitely. We’d say go to the movies and we were in the movie theater. We don’t use the word cinema very often.
OK. It’s a British English word but we could also say movies in Brtitish English as well. OK. OK. And then it was great, Jay’s phone rang – do you know what this word is? There it is. It’s during the movie. And then look at the next one. Jay said ‘It was only for a couple of seconds before I turned it off. So notice those words ‘during’ and ‘for’. We use ‘during’ to say when something happens, but we use ‘for’ to say how long something happens. So two little prepositions there about time but with rather different meanings. And then the final word that’s missing here. It rang twice. Twice means two times. So one time is once. Two times is twice. What’s three times? It’s three times. There is an old fashioned word that we say- thrice – but we don’t use it much these days. We say three times. OK. So that was my little conversation about movies.
That was really fun.
Hey, Story Paul, what do you… do you like to watch movies at home or go out to movies usually or do you do both? Well, you know, that’s something that has changed a lot over the years. Modern life and you know, having a child, having a daughter, makes it a little bit more difficult to go out as often as I’d like to so I end up being a consumer of home movies, just like most people, you know with the streaming services today. But I do enjoy being in the movie theater. If I have a choice, that’s what I choose. For people learning English and practicing English, it’s just great now that it’s easier – less expensive and more convenient to access movies on the internet and the short clips, as you mentioned, to be able to repeat and watch the same clips numerous times which will be really beneficial. And a cool thing, of course, if you’re watching with Netflix or on a DVD is you can turn the captions on. Mmm, yes.
So what do you think of that Paul?
Well, with the captions I think it’s a good idea to use them on and off depending on what you’re trying to do. In some cases, depending on the level of the learner, you can, you know maybe first if you’re not so familiar with the topic and it’s a little bit above your level you can leave the captions on, and then once you’re familiar with that scene, or you’re familiar with that episode or that movie, you can watch it again with the captions off. And you’re going to feel really comfortable doing that. ‘Cause my students…
That’s great advice, yeah.
Well, my students often say that they find it hard to understand every word, and it worries them.
Yeah. Yes, this is a big problem. A lot of people mention that to me since I work with movies. And I, you know, what I usually tell them is to first all relax – that their goal is not to, you know, capture every word. They should be paying more attention to the situation, the way the characters are looking at each other and the overall scene. And if they do that, if they pay attention to that, the language will actually find itself, you know, going into their knowledge base anyway – not the complete sentences, but important chunks of language. They will actually aquire that over time. Especially if they repeat watch.
I’ve had that conversation many times with students about should we use subtitles or not, and in my language or in English, and more and more, what I’ve been saying is ‘What do you like? What makes you most relaxed and motivated to watch?’ Because in the end I feel the most important thing is how often you do it and how much you enjoy it. So if you’re trying to do it a certain way because someone told you to do it that way, that might not be the best.
But I think we’ve got a great tip there which is don’t worry about understanding every word and pay attention to the situation and the mood and the attitudes and the emotions of the actors as well and that’s going to draw you into the story and make it enjoyable, isn’t it?
Can I ask Paul one question? Because I think he’d be a great person to take this question. So Paul, one thing that I do in French, when I see a movie in French because that’s the language I’m learning, is I like to read about it in English before I go. And I like to know what’s going to happen and I find when I am more prepared, knowing the story and the characters, then I’m able to really grab more of the language. Do you agree?
I think that’s fantastic. I think that really works. There’s this idea sometimes in language learning that, you know, you should never do anything in L1, in language one, that you should go straight all into languague two, and really if you are prepared ahead of time and you know something about the story,then when you actually receive the story in your own language, French in your case and English for the English learners out there, you’re going to be more relaxed than if it’s the first time you’re exposed to this mystery movie and you have no idea who anyone is or what the story is. Then you have to tackle too many obstacles at once and again, it’s what you said before, whatever works for you. If you feel that subtitles in your own language help you, then by all means. If that’s going to keep you more relaxed then do that, and later on you can just take them out and not use them.
OK. So that’s another great tip, isn’t it: to prepare beforehand. And I have another question. What can you do afterwards because is it just a question of watching, or are there things you can do afterwards that can help? Well really that’s… that’s where you can really make the material more yours, right. You can start to own it if you do things afterwards. And that’s… you know it’s kind of like when you watch a movie you like and then, you know, you sit around with friends and you talk about it, you get really good at telling the story. You kind of, you know, start owning it. So what I think works out well is role playing. And in the resources you’ll find, you know, how to find the scripts and grab a friend or with your teacher or with a like minded learner, role play a scene. Not the entire two hour movie but a scene. A three minute scene. That is a great way of acquiring the language in a deeper way. So there’s another tip which is to… after the movie, to talk about it with your friends and also to engage with role play and discuss it with your freinds.
OK, so we’ve got some great tips there and we’ve got some great resources. I’ll put some in the details below. And make sure you join our Facebook group so you can find them there. And also share the information in the Facebook group so look for us and join. Please. Yeah, and erm, I think it’s time now to take a question. Oh we have a question!
OK guys. Now we had a question that came up related to our last English Show. Because in our last English Show we were looking at the verb ‘suspect’. You know when you think something is going on that’s not good, you suspect something is going on. It’s believing something is true but you’re not absolutely certain. You have no proof. You have a strong feeling. You have a strong feeling and no proof. And we had a question from Neven Anise and she said: I would like to ask you, what’s the difference between doubt and suspect. So that verb ‘suspect’. But also the verb ‘doubt’. Actually I said she. I think it’s a he. Sorry Neven. I think so, yeah. Sorry. And when do we use each one. In fact what’s going on here is they’re both used in situations where we’re not certain of something and so if we suspect something is true we think it’s true, but if we doubt it’s true then we think it’s NOT true. So it’s like a positive idea and a negative idea.
So I’ve got a question for you which is can you think of something that you doubt.
Hmmm. Is that for me or for Story Paul? Let’s go to Story Paul and find out. Can you think of something that you doubt, Story Paul? Well, let’s see. Something that I doubt. Well you know it’s a really nice sunny day so I doubt that anyone went out with their umbrella. OK. You’re based in Argentina so you’re in the southern hemisphere where it’s summer, isn’t it? Whereas… That’s right. Whereas it’s very cold over where you are Fluency, isn’t it, because it’s winter. Ahhh, no I suspect you have not been following the forecast in France because it is beautiful here. It’s around, well, nineteen degrees, eighteen degrees. And do you doubt anything about the weather? About the weather? Yeah, I doubt we will ever have a tornado in France because they just don’t happen, so I strongly doubt that. I think you can be sure, almost sure of that. Almost 100%. Though with global warming, some strange things are happening. So it is a doubt. I doubt we can be sure about the weather any more anywhere because of this. Well I doubt if I can go out without a warm coat today because it’s cold in Philly. Is it? It’s winter here. I suspect you’re growing a bit tired of winter, You’re quite right. well, great question. We’d love to have more of your questions. You can submit them in the comments for the English Show on YouTube. You can also email us, or even better, in our Facebook group, the English Show. Post them there as questions and we’d love to answer them on the show. I think it’s time for a game. Oh I love games. Let’s have a game! Let’s do it!
OK. Tell us about the game.
Today’s game is all about movies. And I’ve got some very old movies for you. I hope you like old movies. Oh, like vintage movies? Yeah, and… OK. And just like paul was saying, we want to have fun with it, we’ve got a little fun task for you. While you watch the movie you’re going to hear it with some music playing, and you have to guess what people are saying. So when you say ‘music’, you mean the sound of the dialogue will be off. You won’t hear what the people are saying the first time you watch it. You have to guess what they’re saying. Are you ready? Yeah. And there’s also an extra special bonus. I’ll give you a little ‘ting’ if you can guess the year of the movie. And you might… an extra ‘ting’ if you can guess the actual actor in the movie, but that’s very very hard. Because I’m worried. You know Story Paul, he’s a master. Well, these are quite old movies so you might win this game Fluency. We’ll see. I doubt that. I suspect Paul will win. OK, let’s watch the first one. Let’s watch the first clip.
So what did you think? Hmmm, am I starting or is Paul? Let’s ask Paul first. Paul. What did you think they were saying? Well it seemed like it was a husband and a wife and he was off to work and it was some kind of a special day for him, or maybe for them. So maybe he was telling… it was their anniversay and he was telling her that he was going to be home early so they can go out and celebrate. Interesting. Interesting. Of course you did have that goodbye. Yeah. And a special day. Interesting. Erm. You’re totally wrong. I’ll give you a little noise for that. OK, Fluency. What do you think? Well I’m going to try and probably be totally wrong also, but I was thinking husband and wife but you know it’s hard to tell at that time period. You know the age maybe of the husband and wife. I’m going to say, I’m going to say it was his daughter. Just to be different. And I’m going to say that at the beginbning he looked really worried about something so I think he had, you know, some job interview or some presentation and then she said something to make him more confident. I don’t know. Maybe ‘You’ll do well’ or “after we’re going to go out and have fun’. I don’t know. Something like this. OK. Was it his daughter? Argh! Actually, it was his girlfriend. And this guy has a wife. Oooo! So he’s talking to the girlfriend. Oh wow. Yeah. And erm… and let’s see what they said. Let’s watch it. Oh I’ve got to go. I’m supposed to be back. I’ll come here tomorrow noon Kitty. I’ll be waiting for you. I’m sorry you have to go. Bye-bye dear. Oh. Don’t forget the money. I’ll get it. Bye-bye Chris. Goodbye.
So you were right that it was a scene where they were saying goodbye. So here are the words everyone. He’s got to leave. I’m supposed to be back. He’s got to go. And then she says ‘Ahh, I’ll be waiting for you’. And then she says something very interesting. She says ‘Oh. Don’t forget the money’. So he’s obviously giving his girlfriend some money here. And notice those words. You can say bye-bye or you can say goodbye. OK, did you like that clip? It was great. Classic. Yeah, we need to try to guess when it was from and who was in it. That’s right. Did you recognize any of the actors or can you give me a date? I didn’t. I mean I can try to guess a date. How about you Paul? I can guess the actress she looks like er… Betty Davis, and he… I’m going to say Orson Wells. I don’t know. It wasn’t Betty Davis. It was Joan Bennet. Do you want to…
I know one of the actors. You know one of the actors! Who was the actor Jay? Edward G Robinson. Yeah! See Jay’s very old so he remembers them. That’s right. Edward G Robinson was the guy. And do you want to guess the date? Go ahead Paul. 1948. And what about you, Fluency? Errr, I’m going to guess a little earlier. I’m going to go with 1939. 1948, 1939. The winner here is Story Paul. It was 1945, so right at the end of the second world war. Right. OK. Are you ready for your next clip then? Yeah, this is fun. Let’s do it. Let’s do another one.
OK, you know Paul was saying earlier about looking at short clips and looking at the emotions and the mood and the feeling. What do you think the mood and the feeling was there? Yeah well apparently the gentleman broke an important ceramic vase or other type of home ornament that was important to the lady in the scene. Yes, you’re right. And she was not very happy about that. She was not happy. What do you think they were saying? Oh dear! That was my mother’s favorite something. Oh good guess. Good guess. OK, what about you Fluency? What do you think? Well I’m going to guess that the guy was, you know, saying sorry in some way and apologizing for what he did and feeling bad that he was so clumsy. OK. Clumsy is and intereesting word, isn’t it. If you’re clumsy then you do things like knock things over or break things. Yeah, and because at the end it looked like she was protecting the other one. So maybe she was worried that he was going to do it again. Absolutely. You’re both very close actually. And you’re right Fluency that he was saying sorry. And when you listen again.. Yeah. When you listen to it, pay attention to how he says sorry. OK, let’s watch it. OK. Argh! Oh, I’m powerful sorry. I hope it wasn’t new. Oh no, very old. Only two thousand years. That’s good. Maybe a little glue. Oh do come on. So there you are. I hope it wasn’t new. Oh no, very old. Only two thousand years. That’s lucky! Now notice he said ‘I’m powerful sorry’. I don’t think we’d say this these days, would we? I don’t think so. No. I think terribly sorry, or I’m really, so, very sorry. That’s it. We’ve got all these other intensifiers that we use. Words we put before sorry to say that we’re very sorry. So I’m very sorry, I’m really sorry, I’m terribly sorry. I’m so sorry. I think that’s all of them. What do you think? Any more? Those are the most common probably. Those are the most common. Yeah, they’re the most common. Notice there’s another word here that you might not know which is ‘glue’. Glue is that substance that you put on things when you want to stick them together. So he’s suggesting perhaps they can mend it with a little glue. Erm, not can you give me a date? Do you want to guess a date Story Paul? Hmm. I’m guessing this one is a bit older than the previous clip so I’m going to go… I’m going to go with 1940 for this one. Uhuh. OK. And what about you Fluency? Yeah, yeah, I would say the late thirties. Late thirties? I want an exact date then please. Argh! 1937. It was 1937! Wow! I can’t believe it!. And I don’t know. I doubt if you can, I doubt if you can name the actor ’cause… No I don’t think so. Let’s see if Jay can. Do you know Jay? I’m afraid that’s even before my time. Hi name was Guy Kibbee, but that’s by the by. All right. This next clip is very old as well. I think you’ll recognise the actors in this and let’s watch it. You’re right. I recorgnized them. Oh. Who was it? WEll those are, those are two of the three stooges. You’re quite right. Did you know that Paul? Yes. Absolutely. I am very familiar with the three stooges. I grew up watching them. Larry, Curly and Mo. You could name them! I can never remember which is which. But wasn’t that Shemp? I think you get a point for naming them. That’s very good. Larry, Shemp and Mo. That’s before Curly. That’s Shemp. That was Shemp in the car. That’s Shemp? Oh, Oh.Give me half a point. so what do you think they were saying? Paul? So I think one of the three stooges said something inappropriate and he got slapped by the lady. Something inappropriate, you think. Any guesses for what it could be? Any ideas? What do you think Fluency? Ah well it probably connects to Shemp in the car with some strange… I don’t know what was going on. It seemed like after he said, oh you know, I don’t know. My animal brother or friend is in the car or something. I don’t know. I really have no idea but I think it was because of that. It shocked her or got her angry. Yeah. OK. Errr… in fact he was saying something quite surprising. Let’s… oh, do you want to give me a date for this before we watch it? Mmm. What do you think Paul? I think these are also from the 1940s. Err… but I’m not sure which part of the 1940s. I’ll just go with 1945. Uhuh. What about you Fluency? What do you think? Errr. I’ll go a little earlier. 1941. OK. The winner here is Paul, because it was 1947. OK, so let’s watch it. Say miss. Would you like to get married? What? Get married. Well, I don’t know. But you are kind of cute at that. Oh, it’s not me. It’s him. Owwww!!! OK. I never thought Larry would seem cute to someone. I think they were thinking which one is the cutest of the three. I don’t know. Yeah probably. So notice something here. He said, ‘Would you like to get married?’ Right? And notice we say get married. He didn’t say ‘Would you like to marry?’ He said ‘Would you like to get married?’ This is much more common in English than to marry. And then she said you are kind of cute. We still use ‘cute’ a lot in modern English, don’t we? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Definitely. We can use it to describe a person or we can use it cute animal, so we watch a lot of YouTube videos with cute kittens and cute puppies. Mmmm. And even what somebody says can be cute an what they wear, especially women. Uhuh. Yeah. OK, I’ve got one more for you. Shall we watch that? Let’s watch it. Yeah. Wow! I see why you saved this one for last. This one is the most mysterious. It is mysterious, isn’t it? What do you suspect is happening? Oh boy. You know the guy. He’s playing with fire there. He’s shaking that champagne bottle and then pointing it at her. The cork could come out and hurt her, you know, and injure her so I think he’s trying to be kind of funny, kind of a wise guy but very dangerous. Very good. I agree, but I wonder what they’re saying. That’s tough. Well, what was her reaction, as well. Do you think she was cross with him or was she frightened? Yes, she seemed pretty er… pretty OK. She didn’t seem that worried about the danger there in the situation. I don’t know. Maybe she’s used to… Do you think she noticed? … this person being crazy. Any ideas for what they’re saying? Are you going to do that trick again, shaking the champagne bottle and pointing it at me? I don’t know. Yeah, whay do you always play around like that after you’ve already drunk three bottles of champagne? You are both actually very very close. Because, yeah, you said ‘Why do you always do that?’ which is exactly what she said so I’m going to give you a little ting for that. That’s incredible. OK, so let’s watch what happened. Why do you always do that? It spoils the chanpagne. It might explode. Never does. Will you guarantee that? +That isn’t funny Frederick. OK. She’s used to it. Yeah. Now notice the use of always here. It’s quite interesting. We often use it when we’re criticizing someone. ‘Why do you always do that’. It’s the sort of thing I sometimes find I have to say to Jay. You know. He’s probably says she’s always saying that I always do that. Yeah. And then, and then at the end she says to him, ‘That isn’t funny Frederick’. That’s another thing I have to say to Jay. Is that right Jay? Do you get these ideas from the movies or… I think it’s verty funny actually. OK, do you want top have a go at naming an actor or giving me a date? I can’t name anybody in these movies I’m just really not educated in this time period with movies. The actor looked more familiar but I just didn’t remember his face., I’m just going to throw a gues. Vincent Price? I’m not sure. Well done! Wow! All right! That must have been a young Vincent Price. I guess I only know the Vincent Price from, you know, the Michael Jackson video. OK, so Vimcent Price. He was a famous actor in his day. And the date? Any ideas for the date? Well they all seem to be in the 1940s. My gosh, errr… 1949 for this one. What about you Fluency? 1948. You’re both going to get [buzzer] That hurts. You’re way off. You’re way off. It was 1959. So it was actually quite recent, that one, comparatively. Yeah, absoluetly. Really off. OK guys. What do you think we should do next? Is it time for a rap? I want to do a rap but I have a really quick knock knock joke for movies that I just heard yesterday. Oh tell me. Ready? Yeah. Yeah. Then we can do the rap. OK. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Who’s there? Dishes. Dishes who? Dishes Sean Connery. I just had to throw that in today because, you know, what better day to do it on the English Show? Love it! OK, and the other thing I want you to do today is to give us a rap. Yeah! Let’s have a rap. Once again it’s Fluency MC. Flu… Flu… Fluency MC. Once again it’s Fluency MC. Grammar through lyrics. Kick it. All right! Tell us about the rap. Well we’re going to do some of that grammar through lyrics, vocabulary though lyrics. So just like short clips are great, movie clips, short songs and raps are great to to repeat and to get that grammar and vocabulary stuck in your heads with rhyme and rhythm, rhythm and rhyme. So I’ve written a short rap using some of the vocabulary we’ve talked about today and Vicki has made a video, so if you’re new to the English Show, the way we do this, the way we go, how we start to flow is we put the video on first for you to watch, listen, read the lyrics and then we’re going to practice slowly togather and Story Paul is going to help us if he’s willing. Yeah, and then we’re going to watch the video again. And of course you can always replay the English Show, and I hope you do, top practice again and again, so you can remember all the great vocabulary and grammar and pronunciation that we’re practicing with you here. Excellent. So we can watch the video.
We went to the cinema last night to see that new Star Wars movie.
Was it any good?
My boyfriend loved it, but it didn’t really move me.
He’s always talking about it, you know.
Star Wars this, Star Wars that.
That’s kind of cute!
Are you serious? And then when we were
buying our snacks, he spilled the popcorn
on the counter and dropped his soda on some kid’s head.
I’m sure he was terribly sorry.
Maybe you should go out with him instead!
I love it. yeah, well, I don’t know if you know this Vicki, but Story Paul, do you think I might have been inspired by you in any way when I wrote this? Absolutely. Story Paul is a Star Wars nut. So I was thinking got to write the rap about Star Wars so that’s how I started off, and then maybe you noticed some of the vocabulary Vicki talked about today like ‘He’s always talking about it’, right? And maybe you’ve noticed ‘It’s kind of cute’. Right, we mentioned that. And I think a few other things in there. There’s ‘terribly sorry’, right? Yeah, Yeah. So that’s what we do every week and I hope you enjoyed it. Paul. How does your wife feel about your Star Wars obsession? Well, I think she wriote the lyrics to this and sent them to you. Well, I was busy this week, I needed a ghost writer. That’s my theory. She thinks it’s cute. She is always complaining that I’m always talking about Star Wars and that. She doesn’t think it’s very cute. And I have to sometimes say I’m terribly sorry but I cannot help it. I suspect that it gets a little annoying for her but, you know, I doubt that it’s a big problem. So anyway, what I’d like to do, Strory Paul, what we do with our special guests and you out there in the audience, English Show viewers, is let’s do some repetition more slowly so you can really feel the rhythm and rhyme with these lyrics so Paul, are you good to go? Will you repeat after me? Let’s do it. Yeah, Ok everybody. Here we go.
We went to the cinema last night to see that new Star Wars movie.
We went to the cinema last night to see that new Star Wars movie. All right. Good.
Was it any good? My boyfriend loved it, but it didn’t really move me.
Was it any good? My boyfriend loved it, but it didn’t really move me. Good.
He’s always talking about it, you know. Star Wars this, Star Wars that.
He’s always talking about it, you know. Star Wars this, Star Wars that.
That’s kind of cute! Are you serious? And then when we were buying our snacks,
That’s kind of cute! Are you serious? And then when we were buying our snacks,
he spilled the popcorn on the counter and dropped his soda on some kid’s head.
he spilled the popcorn on the counter and dropped his soda on some kid’s head.
I’m sure he was terribly sorry. Maybe you should go out with him instead!
I’m sure he was terribly sorry. Maybe you should go out with him instead!
Great. And erm… that sounded great. And I just want to remind everybody, one of the benefits of doing this kind of practice togather is you can really see how a lot of words can fit into one sentence when we rediuce, when we shrink some of the words, the sounds, and we link them togather. Right? So ‘dropped his soda on some kids head’ right? Or ‘and then when we were buying our snacks’, so I make these raps, not to teach you to rap, but to help you get better feeling and practice with natural rhythm in conversation. So great job, Paul, great job. Everybody out there. Hey! Let’s check out the video one more time, and then remember, you can always go back to watch the English Show again to practice. Here we go.
We went to the cinema last night to see that new Star Wars movie.
Was it any good?
My boyfriend loved it, but it didn’t really move me.
He’s always talking about it, you know.
Star Wars this, Star Wars that.
That’s kind of cute!
Are you serious? And then when we were
buying our snacks, he spilled the popcorn
on the counter and dropped his soda on some kid’s head.
I’m sure he was terribly sorry.
Maybe you should go out with him instead!
Love it! Oh good. I’m glad you liked it. We’ll be back next week on the English Show with another rap, more conversation practice, another game and another guest. That’s right. We’ve got David Deubelbeis. Oooo. Yeah, he’s coming in and he’s going to be talking about how to help us be better independent learners. so lots more good tips. Yeah, and in the meantime, please please join us. Of course subscribe to our channels, and also if you want to keep up to date on what’s happening with the English Show and ask questions that we could put on the show, join the English Show on Facebook. That’s right. I’ll put some deatils below for howyou can follow us. OK. And also, Story Paul, how can people follow you? Oh yeah, tell us. OK guys, yeah. People can follow me on my Facebook page, and also on my YouTube channel, and on my Twitter feed. Excellent. OK. I’ll put the details below everyone. And I think the last thing we have to do is say thank you to Jay! Thanks Jay. Thank you Jay. It’s been my great pleasure and I hope everybody’s enjoyed this program. Absolutely. And bye-bye everyone. Cherrio. Have a good week and stay in touch and we’ll see you next time on the English Show.

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4 thoughts on “How to improve your listening and vocabulary by watching movies”

  1. That’s interesting that you could improve your vocabulary by watching films. I would think that would be a good way to introduce new words. I’ll have to watch some more films to help my vocabulary.

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