Learning English through art

ICLS place a strong emphasis on providing its language students with a fully rounded experience in their target language, in order to guarantee that language learning is educational, enjoyable, and immersive. That’s not to say that any of these areas are mutually exclusive. Far from it. Learning a new language requires employing a variety of different methodologies and over the course of this article, we’ll explore how learning English through the arts is an exceptionally useful tool at everyone’s disposal.

Movies are a great way to learn English. Movies help English language learners to pick up the nuances of everyday speech. Movies use natural language, which makes watching English language movies a great way improve vocabulary, learn English idioms, colloquialisms, and slang. And all the while offering hours of pleasure too. Listening to spoken English is key to learning to speak English. Through dialogue, movies also help English language students to hear how words are pronounced. As well as all the plusses listed above, watching movies in English can also give students clear cultural insights into places they may be planning to visit. Movies are also a great talking point. Who doesn’t enjoy talking with their family, friends, and colleagues about movies?

Now, here are a few tips that will help you to learn English through movies:

If you’re a beginner at a lower level, it’s usually best to choose a movie with which you’re already familiar in your own native language. By doing so, you’ll take out one potential problem: having to understand complicated storylines by trying to follow the plot! This way, you’ll be able to focus all of your attention on the narrative.

Don’t be afraid of using subtitles in your own language. You’re not cheating, you’re still hearing the dialogue in English and be absorbing much of what you hear. Switch off the subtitles only when you feel confident to do so. No pressure.

Keep a journal handy, this way you’ll be able to jot down memorable words or phrases you’d like to remember and memorize. Most importantly of all, be sure to pick out a movie that you know you’re going to enjoy. If you’re bored, you won’t be paying full attention and you’ll learn little. Watching movies in English is a great way to learn English and we’d strongly encourage our students to seek out entertaining movies in the English language to augment their English language studies at ICLS.

TV, like movies, is another great way to help students learn English through the arts. With so many streaming platforms available to choose from, you’ll be sure to find something entertaining and educational that will help you to improve your knowledge and understanding of the English language and American culture and history.

Learning English through songs is another fantastic way of improving your English. So many of the world’s great singers, songwriters and bands record their music in the English language that we’re willing to bet you’ve already memorized many English language tracks already, no matter what your nationality or native tongue. Songs are brilliant for helping to develop English language fluency. Choose songs with rhyming words and rhythms that repeat, where the language is sung clearly and distinctly. Music is a universal language that can have you singing and dancing all day. Pop music is incredibly accessible, catchy, and certainly the best way to start because the sentences are short and easy to understand. Lyrics become fixed in our heads very quickly, far quicker in fact than almost any other form of learning you may care to think of. Building English vocabulary by listening to pop music is a supremely enjoyable way to improve your accent and help you with your formal English language studies.

Podcasts are another modern method of learning English through the arts. The internet really has changed everything! Easy to download, incredibly convenient for ‘learning on the go’, podcasts help you to develop your listening skills, can teach you specialist vocabulary, improve your pronunciation and so many of them are free! A quick search of your podcast app will lead you to any number of English language podcasts designed specifically to assist with English language acquisition. And many of the best podcasts designed for English language learning are accompanied with a written text version that can be downloaded. Here are a couple of suggestions to get started: Learn English Podcast is aimed at beginner to lower intermediary levels. Discussion based episodes cover all manner of everyday situations and each episode comes with a downloadable written text. Voice of America: Learning English broadcasts to English language learners of all abilities and cover a broad range of topics that include health, history, culture, lifestyle, and technology. It also comes with written text to download and help you along.

Excited to continue learning English in the United States? For over fifty years, ICLS has offered English classes for learners across the globe, including a number of English classes in washington dc, as well as business english and english pronunciation classes both in-person and online. Our extensive array of carefully tailored English language courses offers study options to meet the needs of English language students of all ages and abilities, in goal oriented, individually focused classes. All of the teachers at ICLS are highly qualified and experienced instructors in the field of teaching ESL. Our teachers encourage constant oral practice and continuous exchange within the classroom, as speaking English is the best way of learning English and becoming fluent. Quality is a byword for everything ICLS stands for in the field of language learning.