TV series for learning English – a waste of time?

Are you one of the awesome English learners who watch TV-series to improve their skills? Then you already know how much you benefit from this simple activity.

you get exposed to real, authentic pronunciation and words usage
you train your listening skills
you have fun and study at the same time

BUT

Ask yourself

how much of the episode do you understand by listening only?
how much do the pictures help you?
can you retell any of the dialogs or jokes?
how many new words have you learnt?
did you really get that joke that obviously had to be funny?

While watching TV-series is definitely beneficial for learning a foreign language, it is quite a passive activity. It is more about extensive rather than intensive listening.

I’ve decided to try the other side of the coin and created a number of activities to turn watching series into more active learning.

Below you’ll find a presentation with 10 different tasks for the first episode. Let me know what you think.