Watching movies for listening practice

If you watch movies for listening practice, here are some tips for you.

1. Decide your level and select a movie that fits you best, for example:

• Beginner: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
• Intermediate: Grown Ups (2010). The movie adds to your vocabulary some slangs also.
• Advanced: No Country for Old Men (2007). The movie is in West Texan accent, and needs a really attentive ear. 

2. Watch movies with subtitles disabled. If you fail to understand a dialogue, rewind the movie, enable subtitles and replay to understand only the problematic dialogue. Then disable subtitles again. Always watching movies with subtitles enabled only improves reading of a learner – and does not make a good listener. Last but not least, never watch a movie with subtitles in your native language. It’s not necessary that the native word really imply the intricate English shade of sense of the word.
3. Watch movie at enjoyable intervals, bit by bit. You cannot learn with a fatigued brain. And do not assume that watching a movie once is enough for listening practice, because practice,actually, is doing things again and again and again. Every time you watch a movie, you get more practice with listening words, phrases, sentences, sounds and voices.
4. You watched a movie and do not understand it all. So what to do now? Chillax – even the native speakers do not always understand a movie perfectly! Moreover, perfection in listening cannot be gained by watching movies only.
5. Listening to something means paying attention to something while you hear something. So watching a movie while you are engaged in something else is not listening – listening needs your attention.