Why You Can't Understand Movies in English & What to Do Instead

hello everybody this is jack from tofluency.com coming to you live from my back deck and i hope everyone is doing fantastically well today it's a gorgeous day so I'm outside and you may hear noises such as drills in the background my dogs barking some chickens and some birds but we find this this enjoyable because today we're going to talk about why you can't understand movies in English and what you should do about it okay why you can't understand movies in English and what you should do about it now I can't really see the chat as much today the live chat but I'll do my best to read some comments from time to time so movies in English a lot of people get in touch with me and semi email saying I can't understand movies and I just want to say very quickly that for my birthday my wife and I watched the movie at home and it's very rare that we have the time to watch a movie because of our children and I wanted to watch something called Dunkirk so war movie Dunkirk d un K I R K so we watched it and about 20 minutes into the movie we turned on subtitles so we turned on the the subtitles for the movie and the reason is we couldn't understand exactly what people were saying so we couldn't understand the dialogue what people were saying in this movie and I think there are two reasons for this may be three the first one our speakers on our TV are very good so our speakers are very good so therefore the sound quality doesn't come through now if we were wearing earphones the sound quality would have been a lot better so that's one thing to consider is your sound quality quality is it good enough can you wear earphones instead does that make a difference the second thing to consider is that with movies there is a lot of background noise just like dogs barking in the background and there's also music so with that background noise in the music that can stop you from being able to listen clearly to what the people are saying as it's more difficult right now for you to listen to what I'm saying because of the postman and the dogs barking but hopefully with the sound quality of the mind it's a lot better than my computer audio I forgot I forgot about the time of day when I started this the dogs hate the postman and here he is delivering mail right now but anyway that's one thing to to think about that is one thing to think about so I have a quick look at a chat hi jack how's it going hello from the Philippines how are you hello from Rome that dog okay so she one also says speaking speed and movies is too fast that's another thing the audio is very quick very quick people speak quickly people speak very quickly and therefore it's difficult to to understand what they're saying also the dialogue in movies is usually quite complex and it's there's a lot of slang in that so especially if you watch a movie based in an an area where there was a lot of slang and different kind of language that can make it difficult one second I'm gonna put my dogs inside a mile come on inside one second everybody wow that should be a lot better and back again so yeah the slang that is used is difficult to understand and it's difficult to to follow so that's another thing why another reason why it's difficult to understand movies and if you are learning English and you want more listening practice I recommend that you do a few things differently instead of just trying to watch movies now if you enjoy movies then I recommend finding movies that first you can understand if it's going to be too difficult and if it's going to be too high above your level then you're not going to enjoy it you're not going to enjoy that movie you're not going to get anything out of it so this simple dialogue dialogue that you can understand for your level so it's different for different people and also to help you you can watch a movie that you've already seen in your native language because then you can understand the general concept and the general idea of what is happening okay so if you understand the plot the plot is like the story if you understand the story then it makes it much easier so when I was doing a lot of Spanish study I watched friends in Spanish because I had already seen all the episodes so I knew what was happening I knew the context in it that context is so important as I always talked about Berry says this is the first time and with you online how is it possible you are dressed in short clothes what about the weather yes so I'm wearing a t-shirt because it's it's about 65 degrees today and on this back deck it's more like 75 or maybe even 80 it's gorgeous out here okay so so far we have talked about that movies are difficult to understand maybe because of your audio so listen on headphones or get a good speaker it will make a big difference but also it's because there are other things in the movie that make it difficult for you to concentrate on the speaking on the dialogue on the conversations when we watch Dunkirk there were bombs going off all the time because it was a war movie and also there was music throughout the movie so it's difficult to really focus on the dialogue that's why we turned on subtitles to help us understand what they were saying and also they use a lot of slang and they use what you would consider as advanced English okay advanced English so they use slang and they just use like sometimes it's specific to the genre too so if you want to watch movies find movies that have simple dialogue that you can clearly understand and also movies that you might have seen before in your native language so you can understand the general context now instead the key is this with listening and I talked about the importance of listening in the last lesson last Wednesday but with listening it's important too find something that is suitable for your level find something that is suitable for your level something what that you can understand and follow because again if you can't understand what they are talking about you won't do it it's too difficult you can't concentrate on it it's just too difficult for you to do so some things that I have talked about before graded readers a graded reader is where they take a novel or any type of story and adapt it for English learners and you might think ah I don't want that type of material I want to understand original material but if you can't understand original material you need to do something else instead so a graded reader is a fantastic thing to get and find the audio book forum find the audio book another thing to do is to watch TV shows instead because TV shows have more basic dialogue everyday English that you want to learn and they have repetition so the shows will repeat the same sentences again and again characters say the same things or similar things again and again so it gives you the context and it gives you the repetition to truly understand what they are saying and to follow what they are saying too so a TV show is more beneficial than a movie when learning English it's going to check the chat box I understand you well because you speak slowly move these I don't listen so I never watch exactly if you don't understand you're not going to watch you don't understand you're not going to enjoy it that's why it's important to find things that you can understand and things that you can enjoy kristina is here good to see you can you answer please what accent you speak British and British yeah so graded readers we have TV shows and something that I found very helpful is or was watching the news in Spanish so when I was learning Spanish and I wanted to improve my ability to understand people the news was a great way to do this and this might not be true for your native language but when it comes to things like science and philosophy and big ideas in general a lot of the words are quite similar so you are able to follow along because you know that talking about something similar also if you read the news and watch the news in your native language again you have that context you can understand exactly what they are saying because you already know the story if it's a story about something you've already read or listened to then you can follow a lunk you can understand it it's more enjoyable so the news is another good thing to watch and honestly these days it's so easy to get access to you can stream the news live on YouTube most channels do this now you can watch the news online wherever you are watch new stories it's quite easy to get access to that type of thing now there's a key part to all of this I'm going to explain later okay a key part that some of you might be thinking about right now um and this is where we have to try and strike the balance to find that middle ground between two things now another thing you might want to do is to listen to podcasts but again podcasts are what when we're talk about podcasts made for the general audience not just for English learners these podcasts haven't been adapted in any way they're not specific to English learners so depending on the podcast and the subject and your level they might be too difficult for you but it's worth investing the time trying to find a podcast that you like a podcast that you can follow along now the podcast I listen to are going to be too complicated and too difficult to understand for the majority of people watching this for example I watch football I listen to football weekly by the Guardian this is a podcast about football or soccer and there are two reasons why it's probably going to be too difficult to understand firstly it is very advanced there is humor in this and a lot of the time humor can be the most difficult thing for somebody to understand secondly there are a lot of cultural references they talk about the culture of England in this they talk about people from England food from England TV shows from England and if you don't know anything about or if you don't if you're not exposed to the English culture then that will be difficult to follow along a lot of TV shows can be difficult for this reason because of the culture because they'll use cultural references famous people food just anything to do with the culture within the show and therefore you don't know what they're talking about when they use it so again with a podcast it can be typical my dog wants to come outside so he can just Bob um so yeah that so the key is to find things that you can understand that is the number one thing to do find things don't listen to that you can understand that right Toby find things that you can understand that you can follow along because otherwise it won't be enjoyable and you won't get anything from it now there is another part to this okay there is another part to this and this is where you have to try and be very smart about the resources that you use and it's this you also have to find things that you find enjoyable you also have to listen to things and watch things that you find enjoyable because if it's not enjoyable if it doesn't interest you then you're not going to get anything out of it it's going to be difficult to do this over the long term so listen to things over the long term that's that's the balance you have to strike that's the middle ground you have to find so I said before that the news can be quite understandable but for a lot of people the news is boring for some basic TV shows can be understandable but you might find them boring a podcast about football might be interesting but you can't follow it you can't understand it so one second that's the key that is the difficulty in all of this to find things that you enjoy and to find things that you understand that's why I really like graded readers because you can find a graded reader on any type of book and enjoy it because it's subject that interesting and it's so so something that you can understand so the key is to take your time find these resources and listen as much as possible listen as much as possible so let's have a look at some comments now nice class thank you it's my pleasure it's readin is the most important way to learn any language then we move to listening and checking the explanation of the hard words and tried to learn them by heart no reading comes after speaking and listening reading comes after comprehension children who are five or six years old can't read but they can have conversations with people reading comes after now you can do the same together at the same time but if you want to be able to have conversations with people the key is listening and speaking the key is listening and speaking and I like to put more emphasis on the listening part than the reading part that's what I like to emphasize nice weather hello from Poland hello hi from Spain is that Salamanca or Sonia monka Sonia monka I can understand your conversations but I can't understand a lot of TV series in English yeah that's exactly what we're talking about because it's not just that I'm speaking at this level where I'm presenting something it's also I'm talking about things that you're constantly listening to you learn in English this is something you already like do on a daily basis you listen to these types of videos you are used to the language I'm using in this video but also it's because it's a one too many presentation it's not a conversation with a lot of people here TV shows are based on conversations between people and sometimes their base or a lot of times they're based on trying to be funny or showing anger showing other things within that TV series Robson has a very interesting point the bottom line to learn languages is willpower so willpower is the ability to do something even though you don't want to do it and it's very rare that somebody can get by or can achieve anything great and willpower alone because you as humans we want to do things that we enjoy want to do things that we do want to enjoy and if there is some kind of future goal here then willpower will play a role if you want to achieve something great then world power will come into it but if you have a strong way and a strong reason to do anything then you don't really feel that willpower because you want to do it because of your strong why you don't have to force yourself to do it instead you just do things because you know it's gonna help you with what you want to do having a strong reason to do something means that you want to do it so willpower can help especially when you use it to set up new habits but if you just rely on willpower you're most likely going to burn out so having a strong reason to do something is more important than having strong willpower I'd love to know your thoughts on that I try to understand the plot of the film because that makes me understand everything that to say yeah exactly so the context of the story and knowing that context is really important because that allows you to understand what people are saying and why they are saying it exactly right hello from Russia now it's minus 40 degrees Celsius it is so strange to see you own a t-shirt yeah last week use minus 10 here but not today not today it's really nice outside yes having strong reasons makes me understand everything yeah your why and your purpose and your reason to do something is is so important it's so important you don't wear glasses I do wear glasses if you're trying to say don't wear glasses then the Sun is right here into my eyes right now and I want to be outside okay I'm going to summarize the the video one second while I'm here the purpose or Lyle's purpose is to bark and to patrol the yard to make sure nobody comes in that's his purpose he doesn't need willpower to patrol the fence because his his why his reason his purpose is so strong everything is telling him to patrol and protect I'll make a video on that soon I got distracted them let's have a look do you think the best option is to watch an entire movie or short episode I recommend to watch TV series if you are at a level where you can understand and follow a movie do it and also there are movies that are easier to understand I wish I had a list of movies that are easy to understand but I don't but a lot of the time it can be so difficult I remember when I started learning Spanish and I ice tried to watch movies in in Spanish and I I couldn't understand a thing and I didn't enjoy it I thought that's what I should be doing but you have to earn the right to be able to understand those movies you have to be able to increase your comprehension to that level and again native speakers find it difficult to understand certain movies ok I'm going to summarize the lesson in one second well come here good boy okay you're done so yeah movies are difficult to understand for a variety of reasons and if you can't understand something then you're not going to follow along you're not going to enjoy it and if you enjoy it then you're not if you don't enjoy it you're not going to do it so the key is to find things that you can understand but also things that you find interesting and also things that are going to help your English in general so take your time to find the right resources for you these might be graded readers YouTube lessons in fact watching YouTube lessons of teachers is a great way to build your comprehension so that you can understand other things as well and listening and being able to understand what people say is just such a huge part of being able to communicate in English because if you want to be able to speak in English and have conversations you need to be able to understand what other people are saying so look at things like graded readers things like podcasts that you can understand TV shows that you have seen before and audiobooks in general that a little bit easier to understand and things like the news as well because again context is so important if you understand the general idea of what is happening then you can understand the sentences that people use and you can guess what they're saying from that context I've got Joseph from Spain when I saw a sitcom from like friends How I Met Your Mother I can understand but when I saw a BuzzFeed video channel or Ellen show another show I could not understand yeah it just depends well think about the cultural references that they use so the Ellen show is very like modern and they use a lot of slang and it might not be the best for English learners such as yourself other people can understand that type of thing they can understand that type of thing but again yeah if you can't understand it and it's stressing you out do something else it's don't see it as like a test all the time oh no my English is terrible I can't understand the Ellen show and I know you might feel down about it you might feel upset that you can't understand it don't worry watch something that you can understand and build up your comprehension build up your comprehension Lyall so it's ly Ellie Lyle do you recommend I watch in a passive way or better to stop and repeat watch my last video my last lesson because I talked about this in depth about the fact that people are too passive when it comes to learning English and that you need to bring in some active learning at the same time so when it comes to TV shows you can watch a TV show and then maybe for like 10-15 minutes a day like you said pause repeat pause repeat and just practice a little bit while you're watching something and yeah it's a really good question thank you most of the time it's difficult for me to memorize words and phrases again I made a lesson on this three weeks ago where I talked about a key and you know the secret as people knew tube like to use that word the secret to remembering to learning remembering and using new words and phrases could you recommend some films TV series shows for students in physics something like through the wormhole I don't really know many to be honest I don't know many I can't think of one but just do a search for TV shows based on science or TV shows about science okay fantastic how long that we've done 30 so far if you're new here then please subscribe to the channel recently I've been doing live lessons I enjoy live lessons because I get feedback from you watching and I can answer questions in real time so yeah subscribe to the channel and go check out my book and a five-step plan for English fluency you can download that for free the link is in the description um so yeah if you've been here for a while it's great to have you still on the channel like this video share it with your friends and join the conversation like mean home well hey let me know what you think in the comment section and yeah be very grateful if you shared this video with your friends I'm just gonna read a few more comments and then go get a cup of tea let's have a look I Jack have been following you assumes a year and a half and I really love your channel thank you Sebastian good to have you Jemma's here I used to watch ABC News Australian they have 24/7 streaming channel what news are really hot but the news are really not the best thing to watch anyways yeah it depends like it just depends again on if you enjoy the news or not sir Attenborough's videos are awesome David Esterbrook I know he's the best he is the best I love I love him so much everyone in the UK loves him do you think good to shadow when we watch in an active way I talked about this in the last lesson yes it can be as long as you're not mumbling as long as you can do it with the best way of speaking you can Ibrahim I've answered that question so just watch this video again I think your dog wants to join our conversation he's funny Luke's English podcast is one of the best podcasts to practice with yeah it's a good one so I think Luke's English is where he talks about various topics in modified English again there's nothing wrong with listening to modified English use modified English and English teachers to help you improve your comprehension skills and just your ability to understand the way people speak and then once you can understand real things in English you don't need to listen to people like me anymore I want to build I want to help you all reach a stage where you don't have to watch my videos I want you to in a year or two watch my videos follow my techniques get high level of English say thank you and then go watch other things friends is beautiful TV for learning and enjoying it is for indeed for many of us yeah I'm getting lots of vitamin D or vitamin vitamin D vitamin D yeah it's a gorgeous day starting to get a little bit cloudy now but it's still gorgeous sunny 1225 fantastic any other questions before I go any of the questions before I go I have a lot of doubts when I see the newspaper what one thing about one of the benefits of reading is that you can easily stop reading to look up new words and phrases so that is one of the biggest benefits of reading when you're watching a movie you don't want to keep pausing and looking up new words and phrases but when you're reading you can do this especially if you use a device that gives you the definition just by clicking one button so it's a really good thing to do should I subscribe it's completely up to you but if you do subscribe turn on the notification bell do you think people can learn by cartoon definitely cartoons are enjoyable for some people can you give any advice about I ops yeah so learn about the exam go through all the practice papers that you can find get feedback on your speaking and writing from somebody who's an expert and then just improve your general English as you go we get lots of practice for the exam what's the best language exchange out for you think hello talk is it's quite good I haven't used it that much but a lot of people really like it ok I'm going to end it there it's been 36 minutes but again yeah find something that you enjoy listening to and find then that you can understand those two are so such key things okay things that you can enjoy things you can understand and then do it as much as possible but also get some output and training as well which I talked about in that last lesson so go back watch my last two lessons if you've seen them before watch them again and start doing the things that I talked about send me an email tell me how much it's helping if it is helping you okay everybody thank you again for being here this is jack from tofluency.com and i'll speak to you soon bye for now

Channel: To Fluency

Views: 26,609

Rating: 4.9311423 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: sfm-2EmJFfE

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2019