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Perfect Phrases for ESL Everyday Situations

Active Learning Advice:
Watch TV in English
Watch TV in English, even if you start with 10 minutes a day or night. If you live with your family or friends, watch 10 minutes or a short program together in English. Keep a small pad of paper and a pen or pencil nearby. Write down in English or in your language any words, situations, or ideas that you don’t understand. After the program, during the commercials, or during a pause you create, you and the others can discuss your questions or other things you have written down. They may understand what you don’t; you may understand what they don’t. If you have recorded the program, you may watch it again after the discussion, looking up words in the dictionary or checking the new vocabulary on your computer. Regularly increase the amount of time watching/speaking in English.
Good Programs for Starting This Activity
image    Children’s TV programs—Cartoons, “Sesame Street,” “Dora the Explorer,” or whatever is popular and appropriate. Watch with the children in the house, with adults, or alone.
image    Soap operas—The plots of these programs are similar to the plots of the soap operas of your native country. The characters, the settings, and the situations are constant. These are not for watching with children.
image    Reality or game shows—”Dancing with the Stars,” “American Idol,” “The Biggest Loser,” and other shows where an activity is taking place are easier to understand than quiz shows where the question-and-answer format is more difficult to keep track of.
image    News shows are more complex unless you are familiar with the news (know it from news in your language). Speech is usually faster and the program moves quickly from topic to topic.
image    Rent or buy videos or DVDs of older TV shows. The language is often easier to understand. Examples of these include “I Love Lucy,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Cheers,” and many other situation comedies (sitcoms).
image    Commercials are particularly good for hearing the latest language (idioms, new computer words, and terms for the latest products). Watching them also lets you observe more about the latest cultural trends.
Idioms and Other Vocabulary
Appropriate: good for the situation, what is needed
Complex: difficult to understand
Constant: happening regularly
Create: make happen (For example, create time to talk by pausing the TV or saying, “Let’s stop every 15 minutes to review.”)
Keep track of: follow, understand
Pause: short stop before starting again
Sitcoms: short for situation comedies, funny TV programs in which the same people appear in different situations
Soap operas (also serials): ongoing TV programs aired in separate sections (Soap operas got this name because some operas have romantic and/or tragic plots similar to these programs and originally most of the advertisers for the programs were soap companies.)
Topic: subject
Trends: the way the culture is changing