Watching television is a great way to learn English. It trains your ear to listen to the faster paced English. It keeps vocabulary alive. Real conversations teach social conventions, slang and pronunciation.
Choose a talk show you enjoy.
Take a look on television and watch about three different talk shows. You can find them in the T.V. guide. Take a look at each and choose your favourite. That's the one you can watch regularly. Two or three times a week is good if you have the time.
But I don't understand?!
Give it some time. After about five or six times, you will get comfortable with your talk host. You'll start to understand her routine, her body language and her personality. Some students like to tape shows and watch them again.
I wish I could hear all the words.
No, you won't understand every word, but do you need to hear every word? I often half listen to people on T.V. and don't worry what I miss. Pick up clues from the body language as well. Be satisfied with parts of conversations. If you can laugh at the following talk show, then you enjoyed it and you were socially engaged in English.
I'm not learning.
Yes, you are. Communicating is not just words. It's understanding behaviour, predicting what will happen next and reading cultural clues. People are generally very social and polite on talk shows, so talk show hosts can be good role models.
Also, the guests are sometimes famous Americans. So the next time someone talks about that person, you won't be lost. You will know who they are, what they look like and little bit about them. Culture adds a lot of vocabulary to the English language.
Most important, talk show hosts find topics of interest and talk about current events. Some are able to find the unusual to perk our interests. Ellen Degeneres has a lot of fun with her Hawaii chairs. You'll enjoy it too.
Now, that makes me laugh! Ellen can be really funny:)
According to TV.com, the five most popular talk shows are:
- The Tyra Banks Show
- The Oprah Winfrey Show
- The Tonight Show with Jay Leno
- Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
- The Ellen Degeneres Show
The American list should help you get started, but there are lots more. In Canada, you can catch some talk shows on CBC. Add a comment if you have found a talk show you enjoy. Others will appreciate your help. Do you know any of the top five talk shows?
Did you like this post? Find "To Subscribe" on the right side of this page and press the word "posts".
No comments:
Post a Comment