Thread: Helping to learn English

Just thought I would pass on this tip from a Russian who now lives in Canada. When she first moved here, she found that watching movies was a really great way to understand English. Actors are portraying emotions which everyone can understand, and when you associate that with their words, it aids your comprehension.

Yep, definitely. When I came to US, I watched TV all day long. At first I couldn't understand a thing, but by the time I had to go to school, I could already understand English pretty well. I couldn't speak it well enough, but still...

i met a Russian last year who claimed he learnt English from watching 5 years worth of tv. the problem i find is the quality of russian tv on the internet is so bad i can only stand around 30mins of it

The quality of Australian tv is so bad I'm supprized any one can watch it !!

Originally Posted by B_Knotty

Just thought I would pass on this tip from a Russian who now lives in Canada. When she first moved here, she found that watching movies was a really great way to understand English. Actors are portraying emotions which everyone can understand, and when you associate that with their words, it aids your comprehension.

I do that for learning French. Only problem sometimes is that people speak too fast to be understood by me because I'm still relatively new to the language. However, when there's closed captioning, that's less of a problem.

To z80: With quality programs like Ocean Girl and Round the Twist exported to the United States I cannot believe you are telling the truth.

i dont know how anybody could learn another language from just watching TV i have rented a few russian movies, and i can barely understand anything, probly cuz its spoken... but still... i have seen brother one, and two, some movie i forget what its called, its about some girl who is a detective i think... she investigates the murder of some guy who shocked some girl with some shocker thing, and then broke her neck when she was passed out and made it look like she fell off her stool. i dunno much after that lol, and i have seen DMB. andi couldn't fallow that one either... how are u suposed to learn from just listening? if i could do that i would just order the russian channel, its like 7.99 a month....

I think it has a lot to do with relating to what's going on with what's being said. I think it works with English because there is just so much English-speaking culture broadcast and sold all over the world that it's easier to do (not to mention English is just a much easier language to learn than most others). It probably isn't as effective with any other language since their influence is not as widespread and there are many more rules and conjugations you have to learn. I think watching Russian television for five years would only be as effective as studying Russian for one year as far as vocabulary and grammatical comprehension go. Of course, watching Russian television and studying Russian will be more beneficial than both. What do they show on the Russian channel? Is it an actual station based in Russia or an American network?

Does anyone know of any international or Canadian channels with Russian programs?

Does anyone know of any international or Canadian channels with Russian programs?

In Toronto on multicultural channes OMNI1 and OMNI2, you can catch up some glimpse. But the content can be very dubious.
What kills me - why you studying Russian?
You Americans and British have nothing to care about, seriously.

The only way to learn a language is to live in it. The earlier the better. Generally, English is more flexible and innovative and productive than Russian.
To me, get English - especially the spoken part of it - to the level of my former Russian is the same as to get to the Moon. Sometimes I think, "What a stupid language", mainly when I listen to people with a bad diction. And there's a LOT of them.

I asked my tutor the other night for her opinion on learning a language from TV. She laughed and said нет!! I have to agree with her.

I think it IS possible to learn a language from TV for many reasons the main one being is, infants watch there perents and try to mimic the language; they don't get tutored untill they know enough of the language to understand what there being tought; so because of this I think you can learn from watchnig a lot of TV... but it's a very slow meathod of learning it

Oh god mick, they don' show ocean girl over there do they?

Round the Twist (The old ones) where good, the new ones are not so good.

As long as you don't get home and a away or things like that.... How embarasing for australia.

piehunt,
I don't no how to express it, really. Is it that hard to get yourself that if you wanna learn language, and learn not for marks but "for your soul" - as the Russians would say - you should learn it at every opportunity, sitting on the toilet - pardon if it works towards your goal - included?

Originally Posted by z80

Oh god mick, they don' show ocean girl over there do they?

Ocean girl is austrailan?....that explains why it is crap. well thats just my opinion anyway.

They used to. There was another bad one, but I forget the name. It was these Australian and English teens who were "punks," but so obviously from the 80s.

wasnt austraila reponsible for 'the tribe' aswell

I don't know the trib, but then again, I don't watch tv too much.

(not to mention English is just a much easier language to learn than most others)

How is it easier to learn english. I grew up here i america and i hate english. You have to worry about perfect phasing, subject-verb agreement, prepositions. Of course, once you've gotten rid of all that stuff it's just words. We can't leave out words like in Spanish. The onlything close to leaving a word out is the understood you. (Fror people who don't know what i'm talking about with "the understood you" it's like this. In the sentance "Go shut the door" the subject is not the door but "you". It is simpley understood that the sentance is directed to you.)

Originally Posted by Vyacheslav(English)

(not to mention English is just a much easier language to learn than most others)

How is it easier to learn english. I grew up here i america and i hate english. You have to worry about perfect phasing, subject-verb agreement, prepositions. Of course, once you've gotten rid of all that stuff it's just words. We can't leave out words like in Spanish. The onlything close to leaving a word out is the understood you. (Fror people who don't know what i'm talking about with "the understood you" it's like this. In the sentance "Go shut the door" the subject is not the door but "you". It is simpley understood that the sentance is directed to you.)

Name one language except Swedish, Norwegian and Danish that doesn't have subject-verb agreement? Or one that doesn't have prepositions?

Edit: The two difficult parts of English are spelling and, to an extent, pronunciation.