Using movies to improve your English speaking skills in a week or less

Oh say have you seen …

Have you seen the “Star Wars” saga? Remember the funny, short, long-eared green character named “Yoda”? Well, he’s quite an interesting character for ESL teachers and students to study because of the way he speaks English. He doesn’t speak incorrectly, but the particular word order is specialized and unique. Can you tell why?

Who has not seen any of the films in the “Harry Potter” series? While reading JK Rowling’s books can be more interesting, the movies are also loaned for use by teachers and students of English. The gardener, the giant Hagrid, speaks an exemplary version of northern British English that can serve as a different model.

The plan

Whether on VHS or DVD, select scenes in which the character you want to model speaks. You, the EFL English teacher, can prepare the script directly from the scenes in the film or use the original dialogue from the book. A practical sequence could be the following:

Play selected scene and dialog

Rewind and play, but now you, the learner, are the character.

Imitate the character’s speech and dialogue.

Repeat the imitation process as necessary to improve

Try to record your voice at the same time you speak at the beginning of the process

Practice several times for at least three to five days.

On the last day of the imitation practice segment, tape yourself again.

Now listen to your early efforts and compare them to your latest recordings. You should notice a considerable improvement. Select another scene from the same movie with dialogue from the same character, if possible, and repeat the process.

Don’t stop there

Once you’ve been through a couple of different scenes of mimicking the same or different characters, you will definitely have noticeably greater ease and fluency in speaking. Plus, it’s usually quite fun, especially if you’re working with a friend, classmate, or partner. But don’t stop there, find other scenes and movie clips that you can use.

Some of my favorites

How about trying other movies by your favorite actor or actress? A variety of English speech models will help you broaden your listening comprehension range, as well as complete your pronunciation of connected speech elements. There are a host of actors and actresses with remarkable speech in the English language who can have you speaking like a native in no time. There are also, unfortunately, some whose speech is more reminiscent of something in which the cat drug.

These actors are often good English speaking role models that I like to use with my ESL learners:

Harrison ford

Sidney Poitier

Sean Connery

Pierce brosnan

Clint eastwood

Brendan fraser

Danny glover

James Todd Smith (aka LL Cool J)

John Travolta

These actresses are often good English speaking role models that I also like to use with my ESL students:

Angelina Jolie

Sandra Bullock

Julia Roberts

Angela Bassett (pictured above)

Halle berry

Cameron Diaz

Reese witherspoon

Remember to check out Hagrid’s speech in the Harry Potter movies and Yoda’s in the Stars Wars saga. You will find them and many other characters excellent models of what to say (or NOT to say).