Learn a New Language By Actually Speaking It
Try for 100 Days
100-Day Risk-Free Trial Trusted by 200,000+

How to watch movies for learning Spanish (and any language)

It’s natural want to make language learning fun and interesting. That’s why you’ll want to incorporate movies into your language learning plan.The following article gives specific examples as far as movies for learning Spanish and French. But you can apply the same techniques to learning any foreign language.

It’s natural want to make language learning fun and interesting. That’s why you’ll want to incorporate movies into your language learning plan.

The following article gives specific examples as far as movies for learning Spanish and French. But you can apply the same techniques and thoughts to learning any foreign language.

Start with English subtitles.

When you’re a beginner, it’s going to be difficult at first. You’ll need a set of training wheels at the start:  subtitles. As a a beginner, you can’t expect to get too much out of the movie. You should just focus on enjoying the movie and becoming familiar with the sounds of the language, the gestures, the facial expressions, the body language, and the distances that people keep between one another.

Keep your eye out for cultural traits. Ideally, after the movie you can discuss some of your observations with people from that culture (such as your teacher) and see what else you can learn about the language and culture. Watching movies isn’t going to be a top effective way to learn a new language. So you should limit this technique to a movie or two a month.

Take notes.

A beginner can expect to be overwhelmed by all the new words and expressions in the movie. There’s no harm in just sitting back and watching the movie without taking notes. But if you truly want to watch movies for learning Spanish or any other language, then you’ll need to take notes during the movie. What are the words and expressions that you encountered for the first time?

If you’re able to jot them down, you’ll have an easier time remembering them in the long run. Then you can study them for later and eventually they’ll become a part of your repertoire.When you’re a beginner, you’ll start to notice the words and expressions that are repeated several times throughout the movie. These will be some of the first words you learn as you begin with your new language.

Break the movie into scenes.

Something to consider: If you're not watching the movie in a cinema, one of the best practices is to dissect the movie and turn individual scenes with dialog into smaller (about max seven-minute) chunks. From here you can work on it as a long-term language learning project.

Download the movie script.

Many classic films have scripts available.  Download the movie script if you can find it. Two sources for this are Simply Scripts and Internet Movie Script Database. Once you’ve found the movie script, next you can take the script and copy-paste it into an online language-learning platform such as ReadLang or LingQ.

Turn the script into language flashcards.

From here, study the vocabulary and the expressions over the long term. You can create flashcards with ReadLang or LingQ and continue to learn your new language. When you’re still a beginner, an entire movie script can be quite overwhelming. This is the reason you’ll need to digest it in chunks of up to seven minutes each.

So assuming that you have the movie on a streaming service or a DVD, you can stop the movie after periods of up to seven minutes and go back and watch the same section again and again until you have learned every word and expression. It’s a tedious exercise, but it’s rewarding because you will improve your listening skills, reading skills, vocabulary, and idiomatic expressions through this process.

You can also practice your pronunciation skills by recording your own voice and playing it back in comparison to the actors in the movie.

Switch to Spanish (or other foreign language) subtitles.

Once you reach an intermediate switch the subtitles from English to Spanish (or other foreign language). When you had the English subtitles on, you could practice your skills at translating and (which also shows you how some expressions cannot be directly translated.) Slang, euphemisms and idiomatic expressions are all subject to the imagination as far as how they're translated from into English.

But when you both listen in Spanish (or other native language and read it simultaneously), the two reinforce each other. You’re improving two skills at the same time.There are pros and cons to having the subtitles on in the same language. On the positive side, you can practice your listening and reading skills simultaneously. On the negative side, you don’t stretch your listening skills because reading is easier.

By keeping the subtitles on you miss the chance to improve your listening skills because you continue to rely on the subtitles rather than tuning your ear carefully to follow the dialogue.

Finally, switch to no subtitles.

After truly studying the film several times, watch the first major dialog and other scenes again without any subtitles. Take note of what you miss.

Choose something fun to watch.

Because of the long endeavur of watching a movie in bits over time, you will want to look for something fun to watch.Here's a short list of great movies for learning Spanish:

  • Volver
  • Bad Education
  • Amores Peros
  • Y Tu Mamá También
  • The Motorcycle Diaries
  • 9 Queens

Because of the tediousness of breaking up longer films, short films and TV series may be easier to work with. There are many programs on YouTube. In Facebook, you can join groups specific to the language you are learning and you’ll find many resources from group members. Group members make recommendations to you and you can look them up on YouTube.

You can also involve your language tutor in your movie-watching learning methods. Ask if your tutor has seen the same TV show or movie. If so, look into incorporating it into your language lesson. Talk about the culture and the language. Discuss the vocabulary and expressions that you learn. You can even carry the exercise over into your grammar discussions with your tutor. In conclusion, watching TV or movies for learning Spanish (or any language) is what you make of it.

If you watch the program in one go, it's a form of passive learning and will not be that effective for your language learning. But if you engage actively by chunking the show into scenes of up to seven minutes and actively making lists of new vocabulary and expressions you’ll be able to get a lot from the experience and your language skills will improve even faster.

Do you constantly feel intimidated when you speak a new language?

Speak With Confidence on Day 1

Join 100,000+ learning to speak confidently in 3 weeks with Jumpspeak's AI Immersion Method.
Start Speaking
Get Unlimited Spanish Conversation Practice.
Try
Get access to our free language hacking course.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.