'Friends', a practice material for speaking English that never fade away (1)

When I was in my senior year in college, preparing for TOEFL test, this show 'Friends' was recommended to me as a supplementary material to practice speaking English. I watched the whole ten seasons, once, twice and three times. Before watching this show, my TOEFL score was around 8,90; and it becomes 106 afterwards. I would not think that it is fair to say that this improvement is wholly due to watching this tv show, but I do think that it helped out big time. Many people nowadays find it useless or even weird to go back to this show which ended ten years ago, but I don't agree. Here is how I practice speaking and listening with this material, and why I think it still helps. 


I bought these the whole set of dvd from a seller, and I watched them on my laptop. The first time when I watched it, I had both the Chinese and English subtitle one, such that I can understand what is going on. It was easy and fun, which is nothing much different from watching TV series in Chinese. The second time was a lot more difficult. I had the Chinese subtitle removed, while still leaving the English subtitle on. This time, I tried to understand each sentence the actors and the actresses were talking. There are numerous idioms and phrases that I didn't understand yet would simply ignore if not checking so carefully. That is when I actually starts to learn the phrases, like 'let's play it by the ear', or 'I am just pulling your leg'. It always takes me a lot of time after each episode to look up phrases in dictionary and internet. The third time becomes easy again. I will still have the English subtitle one, but this time, I will try to read out loud the lines together with the actor. It was not easy at the beginning, but became much easier once I got used to it. 


It was not easy to go through all these three procedures, and I don't think it is appropriate for each ESL teacher to ask their students to repeat. However, there are certain lessons we are able to learn. Firstly, it is much more useful to ask students to watch one episode three times than to watch three different episodes one time. Secondly, during the second time of watching, students should focus on the details of the lines each actors say. ESL teachers can ask their students to write down what they have learned and share in class. Finally, during the third time of watching, students should follow the lead of the actors and actually say the lines out loud, which helps their speaking a lot. Another possible task ESL teachers may assign at this stage is actually asking a group of students to act out a few scenes or even the whole episode in front of the class. There is no need to focus on the details of acting, but repeating the lines should be the main point of this task. 


These are my own procedures of using this material, and some suggestions to the ESL teachers. In the next passage, I will be talking about why, to me, this material seems to be the most appropriate one in terms of improving English.