How to choose a series to watch in English
2024-11-17 21 min
Description & Show Notes
Discover how your favourite TV shows can become powerful tools for learning English. From binge-worthy series recommendations to tips on rewatching familiar content in a new language, we share fun and practical ways to improve your listening skills. Tune in, listen and read the TRANSCRIPT on our website!
In this episode, we talk about:
In this episode, we talk about:
- Why choose series over films? (0:24 - 2:18)
- Using trailers to choose suitable series (2:18 - 3:43)
- Accents and dialects in series (3:44 - 5:45)
- The role of subtitles in language learning (5:46 - 7:10)
- Tuning your ears and building habits (7:10 - 9:56)
- Personal experiences with TV for language learning (9:56 - 12:59)
- Learning through listening and personal study habits (13:00 – 13:33)
- Series recommendations for language learning (13:34 – 15:54)
- Watching familiar content in a different language (17:22 – 19:01)
- Flexibility in language learning content (19:14 – 19:42)
In dieser Folge sprechen wir über:
Entdecken Sie, wie Ihre Lieblingssendungen im Fernsehen zum Englischlernen genutzt werden können. Von Serienempfehlungen bis hin zu Tipps, wie Sie vertraute Inhalte in einer neuen Sprache erneut ansehen können, zeigen wir Ihnen unterhaltsame und praktische Wege, um Ihre Hörfähigkeiten zu verbessern. Schalten Sie ein, hören Sie zu und lesen Sie den TRANSCRIPT auf unserer Website!
- Warum lieber Serien als Filme? (0:24 - 2:18)
- Mit Trailern geeignete Serien auswählen (2:18 - 3:43)
- Akzente und Dialekte in Serien (3:44 - 5:45)
- Die Rolle von Untertiteln beim Sprachenlernen (5:46 - 7:10)
- Einstellen des Gehörs und Aufbau von Gewohnheiten (7:10 - 9:56)
- Persönliche Erfahrungen mit Fernsehen zum Sprachenlernen (9:56 - 12:59)
- Lernen durch Zuhören und persönliche Lerngewohnheiten (13:00 - 13:33)
- Serienempfehlungen zum Sprachenlernen (13:34 - 15:54)
- Vertraute Inhalte in einer anderen Sprache ansehen (17:22 - 19:01)
- Flexibilität bei Sprachlerninhalten (19:14 - 19:42)
Transcript
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the 3 English Experts.
I'm Dave.
I'm Rebecca.
And I'm Birgit.
And welcome to this episode.
3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey.
Hello, everybody.
We're back again with a new episode of our podcast.
And this time we're going to talk about series on television you can watch in order to help improve your English.
And yes, Rebecca is going to start to tell us something general about how to choose how to pick one of the many you might have or you might not have depending on what programmes you subscribe to.
Yeah, exactly.
So I think first of all question is series or film.
So when you're looking for something to watch, people say, should I watch a film?
Should I watch a series?
So first of all, I would say, watch first of all what you like to watch.
If you're a film junkie, and you enjoy films, go with films.
If you prefer series, always it should always be something that you enjoy and that you like.
I think the benefit today we're talking about series is series are shorter.
Normally, like one episode is anything between 30 minutes and one hour.
So it's less time invest.
Of course, you can break down a film into two parts.
But generally, I think that's quite nice that you've got these smaller chunks that you can watch.
And also the benefit of series, I would say is you get to know the characters.
So by episode two, episode three, you go, you know, this is this person, you know a little bit about the story, you know, kind of where the thing is going.
And so you're already and the vocabulary is probably repeated, because we're talking about the same topic, the same people, the same places.
So it's not all new every time.
If you watch a new film every time, it's a completely different topic, maybe different people.
So I think just this continuation of a series can be quite helpful when you're learning a language or not.
And you know, you can watch a couple of episodes.
And if you don't like it, okay, you're out.
And I think Biggie, you wanted to say about trailers, right?
Yes, that's what I thought before.
Obviously, today we're going to talk about that.
What's a good tip?
And I did that to look at some trailers to see what the language is like, because honestly, I don't very often watch series in English, but I have recommendations.
Interesting, isn't it?
Yes.
And I watched the trailers and it's so interesting in the trailers, you can get a grip of an idea of what to expect, how they will talk, will it be difficult?
Will it not?
Can you understand?
And the characters, it's a setting, it's either American set in the USA or in Britain, that gives you a good insight into the people's lives.
I think that's a good idea.
And the trailer is usually always there.
Yeah.
And actually, I think on, as far as I know, definitely on Netflix, they have numerous trailers because I've noticed they'll have trailer one, trailer two, trailer...
So there's actually quite a bit that you can watch before committing the time.
And so that, yeah, I think that's a really good, good idea.
My next point, maybe Dave, you can comment on this.
My next point was about dialects.
So I think obviously you might choose a show, something like Peaky Blinders or Game of Thrones, or I don't know.
And they might have really quite difficult accents and dialects to follow.
So Dave, you wanted to talk about a couple of shows where these sort of this topic comes up, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, if you go to Netflix, if people have Netflix out there, I've got three recommendations and all of them sort of involve accents or dialects in some way or form.
And I think this is just a great way to, you know, to get yourself familiar with the different dialects and accents that there are in the English speaking world.
And if I remember back, we remember back to our time of learning English or German.
You just never had that possibility that you have today, not in the same way.
So I would highly recommend it.
I've got three recommendations.
Maybe I can just shoot you my first one.
The first one is Gentlemen, it's on Netflix.
It was originally a film by Guy Ritchie, the guy who made Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, if you know the guy.
He was also married to Madonna, fun fact for a while, but his films are great.
I love them personally.
It's not everybody's cup of tea.
They can be quite violent and also a little bit gory.
So there's a lot of blood in it.
But in this particular context, coming back to the accents, there's a whole range of accents and that's the beautiful thing about it.
He also shows a whole range of different, as in England, we have the class kind of class system still in a way.
And so you have everybody from the South London gangster, so with a sort of the Cockney accent from London, all the way to this posh aristocratic family who own big estates in England and other accents as well.
You get the all kinds of accents, you know, the Liverpool accent, these are involved as well.
I mean, it's absolutely brilliant when it comes to accents.
So that would be my first tip, just on an accent perspective and dialects.
It's absolutely amazing and I'd highly recommend it.
But maybe with subtitles and that's maybe our next little topic is subtitles.
Yes, no, in that language, what to do?
What's your ideas, guys?
I think subtitles to me generally best would be English English.
So if you're listening in English, have the subtitles in English as well, because then when you miss a word or they keep saying a word and you're like, what is that word?
I can't figure out what they're saying.
And then you see it written and you get, ah, okay, that's what it is.
Sometimes when I say this to clients and I say, you know, subtitles and listen, they go, well, I can't do both at the same time.
Have you heard that?
Have you heard people say that?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
I can't read and listen at the same time.
It's very confusing.
There are a lot of studies that show one of the best ways to learn languages is to use as many senses at the same time.
So by listening and sort of subconsciously reading, you don't always necessarily have to be really focused on it, but it can really reinforce vocabulary phrases.
You can learn new words.
You know, I've done it in Spanish and it's really helpful sometimes because I think, what are they saying?
I can't quite get that word because they're speaking so quickly and just having it written there, that's what it is.
And so I would say, obviously, if you're quite advanced, you can skip the subtitles and try without.
But I think from an intermediate level, it can be quite helpful.
And definitely, like you say, when you've got quite tricky dialects to follow, then yeah, I would be pro-subtitles.
Birgit, would you agree with that?
Oh, strongly.
I'm absolutely convinced that this helps.
And even on upper intermediate level, because I believe you will never ever understand 100% of native talker unless you really, really, I don't know, because there will always be words.
If I watch an American series, they use language I might never have heard.
And that helps at any stage of the learning process.
Yeah.
I mean, there's always things that I don't understand and I don't quite catch it because it was fast.
It was maybe a different accent that, yes, of course, I know most accents, but sometimes they just speak so unclearly.
And with an accent or dialect, you just miss it.
And often my wife says, what does that mean?
I said, I didn't hear what she said.
Can you rewind it a little bit?
Yeah, I think it's all about the benefit of all of this, of listening or watching a series is tuning your ears.
I always say to people, you know, if you want to improve your listening skills, you've got to practise tuning your ears.
And it really does work that the more you listen, the easier it gets.
I remember I watched an Irish series with my husband who's Irish and called Love Hate.
Brilliant series a few years ago, actually very, very violent and quite scary, but they all had really thick Dublin accents.
And I really struggled for quite a while, even as a native speaker, to understand what on earth was going on.
But actually, the more we watched after a few episodes, it was no problem.
And again, it's just this tuning that you get used to the sounds and the way they speak.
Yes, exactly.
And that's a good example.
I think that's the best you can do in order to pretend to get into a situation as if you were in the country.
You asked me, did I watch, had I watched anything while I was in England back then?
And I can only remember that the television was on in the late afternoon, 5.30, Neighbours, a series.
And that's what we want to try to get over here, learning a language.
And that's, as you said, just tune in.
I mean, there was no way they would provide German subtitles.
It was just by listening and continuously hearing.
And that's another recommendation.
I have make it a sort of experiment while you're in a learning process.
Why not tell yourself, OK, let's go in the next three months.
I'll try a series.
Maybe I can follow that.
It's going to be enjoyable and make it a habit.
That's what we talked about, how to make a habit and then a positive learning experience.
Yeah.
And I did that learning German.
You know, people ask me, how did you improve your German?
And a lot of my listening skills, definitely comprehension came from watching TV.
So when I first came to Germany, there was no streaming and we didn't even have cable.
We had like three channels or four channels.
And so that was the only thing to watch.
And I remember watching The Simpsons and it was on in German and I was so upset because I couldn't understand.
And I love The Simpsons and I just couldn't follow.
It was so quick.
And I was like, oh, this is awful.
How am I going to live here and not be able to watch TV?
But then over time, the more and more I watched, don't even notice it's in German anymore.
You just it's just normal.
And so it does.
It does.
And I didn't sit writing vocabulary down.
I didn't do that.
I just sat and listened and listened.
And, you know, you accept that you don't understand everything, but it does.
It does get better with practise.
You just have to stick with it.
Yeah.
Your brain just sort of adapts to it, doesn't it?
Somehow it's strange.
You just have to trust with the system, I think.
Just keep being consistent, doing it all the time.
I mean, one of my other recommendations is from Netflix is something that is not well acted out.
It's not it's more of a reality TV series.
But I think from the conversation standpoint in this, it's called Buying London.
And it's basically about a real estate agent in the luxury class of the really high flyers, the really expensive houses and flats in around London and this real estate agent and his firm.
And so often there's really good conversations, whether it's in the company, whether it's out in the in the houses or even, you know, privately in conversations.
And I think this is really cool because it's you're just listening to the conversations.
And so you get a lot of really good conversational English.
That's real dialogues.
Yeah, it could be in business, in a business context.
In this case, it could be more in the housing context, talking about houses, flats, if that is something that you're interested in.
And also, of course, then privately, so private conversations.
And I sat with my wife to watch this.
My wife is originally from Albania.
Her English is very, very good.
But often there are things that she doesn't understand and she wants to improve her English.
And this is one of the few things that we could sit down together and watch, because most of the things she doesn't want to watch with me.
But this one, because it's about houses and flats and real estate, she wants to watch it.
And we actually learned quite or she actually learned quite a lot of new phrases, words, just by sitting there and saying, what did he say?
And what was that word?
And we had the subtitles on in English.
And then she picked up quite a lot from that.
So she never writes them down like you did, Rebecca.
I'm one that actually writes vocabulary down.
That's my way of doing things.
Everyone's different, I think.
But just the listening is a great way to learn, I think.
Yep, absolutely.
I have to ask, Dave, when I was in Spain, so I don't know if this show is still on.
I wanted to ask you, I used to watch TV in Spanish and there was a local TV show called Canta Canta in Valencia and it was on every night at like, I don't know, seven o'clock or something.
And I used to watch it with my friends before we went out drinking.
And it was this live karaoke show where they used to go to little regions of the Valencia region.
They used to go to little towns every week and they'd invite people up on stage to sing.
Is that still on?
No, you've never seen Canta Canta?
I've never heard of it.
No, I'm sorry.
When we come to Valencia, I want to see.
We're going to check it out.
Is Canta Canta still on?
And we learnt Spanish songs and we used to sing along.
And it was, again, it was a fun way of improving language, but just listening, watching.
And these two had the words, you see, because it was karaoke.
They would have like the words would come up on TV.
So that was quite cool.
Okay, cool.
I just wanted to ask that.
I'm afraid all I watch in Spanish is the Liverpool games in Spanish, so you can imagine how fast they are.
Yes.
Okay.
Great vocabulary.
Birgit, do you have a recommendation, anything, series you like watching?
Yes, I do.
Just to have a different channel to mention Disney here.
We had Netflix before.
We watched The Bear King of the Kitchen in German, I must say, but it's a brilliant series.
And I saw the trailer now in English.
I think it's okay with the subtitles on.
I would have thought it would be harder, more advanced, but it's not bad to understand.
So I can recommend that.
It's a brilliant series.
Well, we loved it.
Anyway, it's about somebody cooking, coming from a family whose father ran some restaurant in a little town, and he went to become a chef in a star restaurant.
So he comes back.
His brother died.
So he's got another restaurant, wants to make it into a posher place.
And it's very loud.
It's very intense, but it's brilliant.
Great actors.
And then I can recommend Only Murders in the Building, something completely different, something funny, humorous by Steve Martin with Selena Gomez and another guy I can't remember.
That's also very entertaining with the subtitles.
So maybe that's worth watching.
If you're looking for something more British, more typical, again, we go to Netflix, The Crown or Bridgerton.
Maybe that's more for the ladies.
But as we heard, the majority of our listeners are at the moment ladies.
Maybe that would be a good tip.
Yeah, very British, of course.
The Crown about the family, the queen, the former queen, the royal family.
Yeah.
Well, I've got one then for the ladies, Birgit.
What about this?
Netflix, Six Nations, full contact.
Wonderful.
All about rugby.
Super.
Yeah, I can say I've seen it because my husband, I have to watch these things.
I haven't seen it.
You must see it.
It's absolutely brilliant.
It's a brilliant insight into rugby, isn't it?
Must is a big word, but yeah.
You do see a lot that you understand things a bit more, but I think you have to be interested in rugby.
Well, you might get interested in it.
Exactly.
If you don't know what it's about and also from the accents perspective, because it's about the Six Nations, which is the British Isles nations and also France and Italy, you get to hear the Irish accent, the English accent or the various English accents, the Scottish accent, the Welsh accent.
So you get to listen to all different types of accents.
So even just for that, I think it's worthwhile watching.
I will have a look.
I watch it for wife.
I get wife credit.
Well, we should have done this.
I watched that with you.
So now you have to watch this.
We should have done this episode in a different way, trying to convince each other which series to watch.
I think one other point I wanted to bring up is I actually think it's good to watch something that you've already seen and you really liked and watch it in English, because some people say, well, you know, I watched this in German and I loved it.
Game of Thrones.
A lot of people say, oh, I watched Game of Thrones.
I loved it.
Watch it again.
Often it's fun to watch something again in the other language because you already know the story, you know what's happening.
And just a whole different experience of watching it in English is actually quite helpful.
It doesn't have to be something new all the time.
So I know so many people who have watched Friends 10 times.
And Friends is brilliant for learning English, I have to say.
It's got relatively good conversations, dialogues.
It's fun.
It's easygoing.
It's short episodes, 30 minutes.
And the dialogue is relatively slow.
It's not this really, really quick dialogue.
And so series like that that you know you like and you can jump in and out.
You don't have to watch the whole season.
You can just watch a couple of episodes.
I think that's I did that as well in German.
I watched King of Queens when I first came to Germany, was always on TV.
A nice, easygoing, funny comedy show and really helped my German, I have to say.
So it's OK to watch things, you know, that you've already seen.
Just watch them again.
I think also the different experience you said, Rebecca, I totally agree with that because of like with a film, if you see it dubbed.
So it's in German.
Of course, you have the different German people speaking.
But when you watch it in English, then you have the original actors' voices.
And I think that just that makes a big difference when you're watching a series or a film.
Yeah, absolutely.
Although it's weird sometimes if you've only seen something in German and then you watch it in English or the other way around and you think, oh, they sound completely different.
That sounds weird.
Yeah.
But my fun fact about learning German is, guys, I once watched or I used to watch when first came to Germany, Arabella, to help my German.
The chat show.
The chat show.
So you can watch whatever you like.
I mean, I think it doesn't really matter what you watch.
You will improve if you watch it and you watch it constantly.
So you could even watch the children's programme.
Absolutely.
Cartoons are brilliant.
Absolutely.
So that was our episode on listening skills, watching a series.
Hope you enjoyed that.
Next time, we are going to talk about present perfect, back to some grammar.
So we have been asked, we have been asked to...
Good one, like it.
...to go into sort of a deep dive into present perfect, how to use it.
It is one of these things that causes so many troubles for English learners.
So we're going to go do a deep dive, hopefully make things a little bit easier and give you some tips.
So that's our topic for next time.
Hope you will listen to us again.
Okay, looking forward to it.
Bye.
Bye.
Thank you so much for pressing play today.
If you have any comments, questions, or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website, 3englishexperts.com.
Have a great day and see you next time.