Intensive English Program

Aloha everyone! This is Noriko.

How is your summer? Mine is going well! I enjoy going beaches, hanging out with friends, watching movies…same as before. haha

One thing I pay attention during a break is to keep my English skills.
Even though I live in Hilo and am surrounded by English speakers, I tend to not use English when I don’t have school. It’s easy to be with friends speaking the same first language, right?

But! Please read this post if you want to keep your English because I would like to share my tips to improve English skills for today 🙂

You might hear watching movies or tv programs in English is good to improve English skills, but what you watch and how you watch?


Choose what you watch

It really depends on your English level, so here is my list!

Reality shows: if you are a beginner of watching in English or want to improve your communication/daily conversation skills.
These episodes are usually not too long and easy to keep focusing on English (for me it’s important haha). And it is about people’s real live and they talk about what happen or how they feel, so the English you would hear is more natural and practical. I learned how to tell my feelings from watching reality shows.

Tv dramas: if you get used to watching in English and improve your listening skills more.
Same as reality shows, they are short enough to keep focusing so I like them. Haha
And I think American tv dramas are really enjoyable!
I watched Friends, Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives, Glee, Grey’s Anatomy, Doctor House, Criminal Minds, 13 Reasons Why, etc…

Movies: choose anything you like and just enjoy!
It would be good to start from Disney movies or cartoons.


No subtitles

If you are watching in English audio with your first language’s subtitles, I think it’s almost same as watching it in your language. You would just read the subtitles and won’t be listening to the audio.
Even if you couldn’t understand well, just keep watching!


Watch it again with ENGLISH subtitles

After you watch till the end and still don’t understand the story, watch it again with English subtitles. Even though you couldn’t understand at the first time, you might just bot be able to catch what they said. If you could see what they said, it would be much easier to understand the story.


This is how I study English by watching movies 🙂
I love to watch movies and tv shows. Watching same stories over and over again or watching a long series drama don’t bother me at all, so I really enjoy studying in this way. If you are like me, then this would be good for you. haha

I hope you could get some tips out if it and inspired 🙂

Taking English classes or talking to native English speakers would be the best way to study, but why don’t you try watching movies and improve your English skills during summer when you don’t have class?

See you next time, a hui hou 🙂