Discover the Movies Best for English Language Learning

Whoever said learning English is difficult and boring hasn’t seen this new study from Preply. It turns out that watching movies can help you improve your English learning, hooray! What better way to learn while having fun than sitting down with a bucket of popcorn and a good movie? Immersing yourself in popular media is a proven way to improve your real-world use of a language. Films can help you practice filling in comprehension gaps using context clues and studying facial expressions and body language for cues. Preply offers us a comprehensive watch guide of the best and worst films for learning English. They analyzed the 150 highest-grossing movies to present popular and enjoyable choices. Their score is based on the average number of words per minute, the difficulty of the vocabulary used, and the ease of watching with subtitles, which makes it easier to follow along.

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The team found that the best films for learning English are:

• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
• Maleficent
• The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
• Spider-Man 3
• The Hunger Games

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has a low word count per minute and a simple vocabulary. This action-packed film should be easy to follow for those who don’t understand every word. The same is true of the Disney film, Maleficent, a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the villain’s point of view.

Popular films that will give English language learners the most trouble are:

• The Wandering Earth
• Oppenheimer
• Barbie
• Shrek 2
• Finding Dory

This list has a few surprising results. While it’s no surprise to see the long, heavy, historical drama Oppenheimer on the list, it is funny to see it beside its famous marketing partner, Barbie, a much lighter film that released on the same day. But Barbie is chock-full of banter and musical numbers that add up to a high word count per minute and a frenetic movie for English learners to keep up with. This is the same reason animated films like Shrek 2 and Finding Dory made the list.

The team’s research points to fantasy and adventure films as the best genre for English learning, due to the large, dramatic, action-filled visuals that can help cue the meaning of dialogue. Epic quests and romantic films make for the best storylines. In keeping with these findings, they determined that the franchises best for learning English are The Hobbit films, the Spider-Man series, and the James Bond films. The team also separately emphasized films with high and low word-per-minute rates, which indicate how easy it will be to read the subtitles. Finding Dory is the most difficult to follow (thanks to the chatterbox of a fish in the starring role), and once again, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes comes up on top. This list is a great study tool for English students and one that ESL teachers should bookmark for lesson plans.