How to improve your English just by watching movies!

When watching tv or movies, you can get used to hearing not only the flow and structure of English conversation, but also the sorts of common phrases that people actually use.

the secret to great English speaking skills is... Netflix?

I had just landed in Hanoi, Vietnam for a one-week vacation in the country's capital city. I was in a taxi cruising towards Hoan Kiem Lake at the city center, and making small talk with the taxi driver.

"What do you do?" he asked me.

"I'm an English teacher. I teach at a high school in Bangkok."

The taxi driver's face lit up. "Teacher! How can I learn English?"

I thought about it for only a moment, and then I told him the answer: "You should watch lots of English movies and television."

It sounds strange, doesn't it? I mean, watching your favorite show or the latest Avengers movie hardly seems like the type of hard work that it takes to learn a foreign language. In my experience, however, my students who spend a lot of time watching American television or English movies are the ones who are the best at conversational English speaking.

When you think about it, it really does make sense, though.

When you are watching a movie or series, you can listen to people speaking in a fairly natural way. Textbooks may teach us proper English grammar, but the truth is, in real life, native speakers speak bad English.

People use lots of slang and idioms in their daily lives. Textbooks don't always teach students to speak the way that real native speakers do. However, when watching tv or movies, you can get used to hearing not only the flow and structure of English conversation, but also the sorts of common phrases that people actually use.

My advice to you is to get yourself a Netflix subscription. You can watch thousands of hours of enterataining English movies and television series. Be sure to watch with the audio in English, however! You can turn on the English subtitles and follow along as you listen.

Even if you just dedicate a few minutes a day to watch one episode of a fun tv series, I guarantee that you'll notice improvement quicker than you might expect.

Try it out! Let me know what you think.