Introduction
Are you tired of your English grammar books?
Had enough repetitive exercises for learning English?
When you get home, doing even more
English
exercises is probably the last thing you want
to do.
Sometimes all you want to do is to sit back,
turn on the TV and chill out (relax).
Well, I have great news for you!
(“Sitcom” means “situational comedy”–they’re about people sitting in a familiar place, and having a laugh.)
There’s no better way to learn American slang and how people really talk.
Get ready to get in touch with “real” English.
Why You Should Learn English with TV Series
Why Learn English with Modern American Sitcoms?
Here are 10 reasons why modern American sitcoms should be a regular part of your English learning diet.
- Sitcoms have more realistic contexts of the English language compared to English course books (maybe your teachers would disagree, but it is true).
- You’ll improve your conversational skills.
- The English you hear in sitcoms is more likely to be everyday English – in other words it’s more ‘real’.
- You’ll improve your listening skills as you’ll be able to hear a variety of different accents.
- You’ll begin to learn and understand different cultural references that are made and feel more connected to a country and the language.
- You’ll finally move closer towards understanding different kinds of humor.
- When you’re a frequent watcher of one sitcom, you don’t have to continuously get to know new and different characters or plots like you would have to in a movie therefore you’ll be able to guess more and understand what’s being said through your background knowledge of the sitcom.
- There’s more repetition of words and phrases in sitcoms which will help you understand them quicker.
- Sitcoms are more predictable in other words you can guess easily what’s going to happen next therefore it’s easier to understand and follow the story.
- If you find a great series that you really enjoy, you’ll end up getting addicted and forget that you’re even learning English.
Improve Your English by Watching Friends – 3 Steps on How to Actively Watch TV Shows
Step 1: Write It Down
Nothing makes the words stick in your memory like actually writing down what the characters are saying. Often times, being able to see what the characters say will help you follow the dialogue better, as well as help you memorize certain phrases for your own future use.
For beginners, try watching the episode with English subtitles (available on Netflix and YouTube), and using them as a guide when you don’t catch everything that the characters are saying. However, one of the hidden benefits of TV being available on the Internet is that you can quickly and easily rewind a given scene as many times as you’d like! Therefore, if you don’t understand something, you can listen to it again and again until you have your a-ha! moment, and everything becomes clear.
Once you’ve written down some dialogue, you’re ready to get to the meat of active listening: the analysis.
Step 2: Analyze, Analyze, Analyze
Are you ready for some active listening? Click the link to get started! This time, I’ll write down the dialogue for you, and we’ll analyze together. You’ll discover that we can already learn a great deal from just the first ten seconds of the scene:
Ross: Come on, you guys, we’re sorry! Our subway broke down!
Chandler: That’s a lie! You went to the game — I can see Joey’s hand!
Ross: For the love of God, take it off!
In this three small lines of dialogue, we can already see two useful and common phrasal verbs: break down and take (something) off. The phrasal verb break down is used to when machines or vehicles stop working properly — like Ross’s subway, which caused him to be late. And to take something off means to remove an article of clothing. In this case, Ross is telling Joey to take off his foam hand, which are sold at baseball games.
We also see a colloquial expression, for the love of God. This phrase is used when you are exasperated or frustrated, and you’re pleading with somebody. For example, you might say to the characters on Friends,“For the love of God, speak more slowly!”
At the end of the scene, Joey tries to make amends by apologizing to Monica and Chandler (start at 2:01 or click here):
Joey: Hey listen, guys, we feel really terrible.
Chandler: He’s doing that weird eye contact thing. Don’t look at him!
Joey: C’mon, guys! We want you to know we’re very, very sorry. Right guys?
Here, Joey is making an apology, and uses some very common language to express regret: We feel terribleand We’re very sorry. You’ll often hear people say these phrases when they are apologizing for something.
Something else you’ll notice is that Joey uses the word guys to refer to all of his friends — even Monica and Rachel, who are women. English does not have an official second-person plural pronoun, so English speakers have to get creative. In many dialects of English, “guys” is used to refer to a group of people in the second person, regardless of their gender. For instance, on a Friday evening, you might ask your friends, “Hey guys, what are we doing tonight?”
I want to make one final point about pronunciation. Chandler tells Monica to not look at Joey: “Don’t look at him! Don’t look at him!” However, in spoken English, the pronunciation of at him gets shortened — Chandler omits the “h” and “i” sounds, and ends up saying something that sounds like, “Don’t look at’m!” This type of word reduction is exceedingly common in casual spoken English.
Step 3: Use the Language in Real Life
In just a two-minute clip, we’ve learned about verb tenses, modals, phrasal verbs, personal pronouns, making threats, expressing regret, and some popular colloquial expressions. Not bad, eh?
Indeed, we’ve put a lot of work into analyzing a scene from Friends, and it’s time to reap the benefits! Now that you have your new vocabulary and grammar points written down in front of you, it’s time to use them with your English-speaking friends. If you’re giving advice to a friend, try using the modal would to tell them what you’d do if you were in their place. Try talking about the best movies that you’ve ever seen, or the most interesting places that you’ve ever visited. By actually engaging with the language that you learn in TV shows, you’ll be sure to memorize it. Actively watch an episode of TV each day, and observe how quickly your English will progress!
Finally, don’t forget to monitor your progress. Learning a language is a very long and slow process, and as such, it’s hard to appreciate the progress that you make. Try taking an English listening test after finishing a season of an English-language TV show — you’ll be surprised at how much your comprehension will improve.
Almost everyone has heard of Ross, Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Chandler and our favorite funny boy, Joey—the main characters of the world famous sitcom, “Friends.” While this sitcom is no longer being produced, it was and still is so popular that you can always find re-runs (repeat episodes) on TV no matter where you live in the world.
It is a comedy series set in Manhattan, NYC and follows six young friends. Their lives are connected by being blood related, roommates, neighbors and old high school friends and they all find themselves living in the same apartment block. It shows their daily lives, their ups and downs and their daily struggles.
Rachel was a popular rich girl in the past and lives off her dad’s wealth. Monica, Rachael’s best friend, is a chef, a control freak and has trouble with her love life. She was constantly teased and laughed at as a child for being the “fat girl.” Ross is the older brother of Monica and has been in love with Rachel since she and Monica were friends in high school, however, he’s a nerd and his friends often laugh at him about his job–he’s a paleontologist (dinosaur scientist).
He’s also divorced, has a child and is desperate to find a girlfriend. However, he continues to have bad luck with women, including Rachael. Phoebe is a hippy and sometimes acts like she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s a masseuse (a person who gives massages) and dreams of becoming a singer even though she doesn’t have much talent.
Chandler works in the office and uses a lot of humor which is often inappropriate. Joey is the most famous character, who is from a traditional Italian immigrant family and loves women. He’s an actor and he dates a number different famous women and his catchphrase (famous saying) is “How you doing?”
The six friends spend most of their time hanging out at Central Perk Café where Rachael works. It’s a very funny show despite it being based on the lives of six everyday people. It’s definitely one to watch.
Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Matt Le Blanc and Lisa Kudrow.
Why “Friends” is a great sitcom to learn English:
This is a funny show and the jokes are very obvious which means you don’t have to understand English perfectly to get what is being said. The characters of the show are all very different and you can learn some excellent English to help you communicate with your friends.
The language is conversational and you’ll also learn how to understand basic humor through the dialogue. The speed of the dialogue also appears to be much slower and clearer than most other sitcoms, which makes it easier for all of you trying to learn English understand more.
"FRIENDS" HELPS GLOBAL TELEVISION AUDIENCE LEARN ENGLISH
An international study has discovered that Friends is the most popular television show for helping people learn English.
Research by Kaplan International Colleges revealed that watching the popular sitcom assists the largest number of people who are studying to improve their language skills.
The study found that 82% of people said watching television programs helps them learn English and 26% claim to have enhanced their understanding of the language from enjoying episodes of the popular sitcom, which originally aired between 1994 and 2004.
Friends, which was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, was vastly more popular with English learners than other American exports. The Simpsons and How I Met Your Motherwere found to have only helped 7% and 6% of those surveyed, respectively.
The series continues in international syndication and millions of people across the world have grown up with the comedy exploits of Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Monica and Phoebe as well as their famous catchphrases such as "How you doin'?" and "We were on a break!"
Jeff Astrof, an executive story editor and writer on several Friends episodes, explained that he was not surprised by the research as he has heard Friends catchphrases being used in the most unlikely situations.
He said of the research: "That's very interesting, but it makes sense. A couple of months ago in New York I had a cab driver of Middle Eastern descent say, "Could there be any more traffic?" in his best Chandler dialect.
"Friends was a unique writing experience because you could pitch a joke in a small room in an office building in Burbank, then a month later hear random people talking about it. I even saw one of my lines printed on a button, and to this day I have people say to me "Did you come up with the line...?" I always say yes."
The research also discovered that the influence of the show is so powerful that people who said Friends helped them learn English were more likely to want to travel to the USA to study the language.
Kaplan asked hundreds of their current and previous students whether watching television, among other things, helped them on their English learning journey and created the How to Learn English Infographic to showcase the results.
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