Learning English can feel tough at times: oh for the confusing grammatical rules, the baffling regional accents and the head-spinning cultural rules. One of the ways in which you can pick English up (and pick it up pretty fast) is through film, TV and music. Here, we’re looking at the eight best films for learning English.
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The King’s Speech
The King’s Speech makes for an easy first place position on our list as the story revolves around the King George VI struggles with a stammer (speaking with involuntary pauses or repetitions). Pronunciation is focused upon throughout the entire movie. What better film for learning English than a film in which someone is learning to communicate in English?
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Harry Potter
Harry Potter presents a fascinating insight into the world of magic. Through these films you’ll learn everything from the most basic of vocabulary (which is unsurprising, given the franchise is aimed at children upwards of 8), as well as words which were created in the mind of J.K. Rowling (probably the best example of meaning created through word phonetics alone). Here are some of the best:
Aguamenti – A spell to create water.
Muggle – Person totally without magical powers.
Fudge Flies – Wizarding sweets.
Inferius – A dead body that has been bewitched to do a Dark wizard’s bidding.
You probably won’t use any of these words in every day language, but they’re just so fun to say.
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The Queen
The most effective way of learning English and proper pronunciation is by watching a film literally defined by the ‘Queen’s English’. This film also shows you the inner workings of the Royal family – making this a must-see for those who truly want to learn about English culture.
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Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Rings is a film adaption of one of the greatest literary works of all time. Written by J.R.R. Tolkien and brought to life for the modern age, this magical story makes for a fascinating study of how differing mythical beings vary their dialects and vocabulary.
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a universally amusing film– for the young and old its fun themes, outlandish costumes and set designs could keep you engaged from beginning to end – even if you have just started learning English and struggle to keep up with the dialogue.
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Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and Beast is one of the most on-point films for pronunciation there is; it’s also a musical – for songs that stay stuck in your head until you’ve learned every last word.
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The Sound of Music
The sound of music has the best of both the music and film worlds and, as it’s family entertainment, there’s a good mix of basic vocabulary, as well as words and phrases that are more advanced.
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The Remains of the Day
This classic film hails from 1993 and tells the story of a relationship between housekeeper and butler; set in the late 1930’s this film delivers formal speech throughout and whilst some of the vocabulary may no longer be in common usage, the way in which people used to speak was far more grammatically correct than when compared to today.
Image source: Wikipedia
