In this post, you will learn why a movie club for learners of English is an ideal option to use your natural interest in movies to expand your vocabulary, develop your language skills, and keep you motivated.
Table of Contents
What is a “speaking club”?
Any speaking club is a meeting of people who share a common goal or interest to discuss certain topics. Speaking clubs, such as book or film clubs, form naturally when people with similar interests get together. Teachers can also organize groups for their students to discuss specific topics.
Online English speaking club is an online meetings of a group of people who are learning the language. Speaking clubs are meant for people who want to have speaking practice in a more natural environment that doesn’t feel like an English class. Participating in a speaking club helps learners build confidence that they can express their thoughts in English.
Why do people choose speaking clubs?
Speaking clubs are the perfect opportunity for smart and outgoing people to connect with others who share their interests, values, and tastes. Even introverts enjoy our stimulating and friendly conversations.
At the meeting, you can learn new things ranging from history to psychology, hear what others think, share your own thoughts, and debate with others. These meetings help you hone your communication skills. You’re not alone with English anymore – you’re in a company of people who are like you, in a way.
In a speaking club, no one expects everyone to speak perfect English. Listening to other participants will help you realize that no one speaks perfectly. You’ll find that mistakes, filler words, and occasional loss for words are part of any communication process. Sharing your thoughts with others will help you realize that imperfections don’t matter as long as you can get your message across, and as long as you understand others.
Giving up on the idea of perfectionism is vital for improving one’s mindset.
Doing so can boost motivation and enhance satisfaction when working towards a goal. This way, you become a more confident speaker of English.
Preparing for the meeting and hearing others talk will also enable you to pick up some interesting and useful language that you will likely remember much better than if you’d read them in a textbook.
Misconceptions about speaking clubs
Myth 1: You need to know the language perfectly to participate in discussions.
You don’t need to be absolutely fluent in English to participate in a speaking club. With minimal preparation, you can do well even if you have a Pre-Intermediate (A2) level. And if you write down your answers to the questions, you’ll do even better.
In our movie club, you have a month to look up the right phrases in the dictionary to express your thoughts and lots of opportunities to share your opinions in writing in the forum. As a result, your answers will be clearer, and you will expand and activate your vocabulary.
Myth 2: You don’t need to prepare to participate in a speaking club, because it’s just spontaneous communication
Although the discussions are informal, they still require some preparation.
In our movie club, for example, you’d need to watch the movie we’re planning to discuss. If you have time, you’re welcome to complete the movie worksheets or answer the questions in the forum.
You might remember a situation from your life when you didn’t know what to say – even if you were speaking your native language. That’s why preparing answers will help you collect your thoughts, think through arguments, and recall examples from the movie.
Preparing before a meeting is also a good opportunity to “upgrade” your language. You can take your time and use specific words and phrases in your answers. This is not something you can easily do in a spontaneous conversation without preparation.
Myth 3: Speaking club is a type of a group English class.
Group lessons and a speaking club have a lot in common, but they also have significant differences. The purpose of a group class is to help you learn new words and grammar and practice them until they become automatic through exercises. At a speaking club, you don’t learn and practice English vocabulary or grammar till you use it on autopilot. Instead, you actively use what you already know from what you’ve learned at class. Just like in real life, no one will correct your mistakes, criticize you, or give you a grade while discussing a movie.
Since this format is as close as possible to a real-life communication situation, the result of the meeting is the joy of communication, insights you gain from communication, and the feeling of belonging.
Myth 4: If I speak English often enough in the speaking club, I will get rid of my mistakes.
A speaking club is not meant to focus on the mistakes. That’s why you won’t get corrections and language feedback, unless to clarify what you meant to say.
But consistent and active participation in the speaking club will help you make steady progress in English. However, if you would like to get rid of your mistakes, you can download the speaking club recording, analyze your speech, making sure to improve your sentences afterwards.
In our community, you can ask language-related questions in the forum and get answers and/or explanations that will help you speak better next time.
The benefits of “Watch Your English” movie club for learners of English
The Watch Your English community is a kind of speaking club + discussion group where each month we discuss a particular movie. All the advantages of conversation clubs apply to this community, but with additional benefits.
Our community is a whole ecosystem for developing speaking skills
What’s special about “Watch Your English” is that you don’t just meet on a certain day about a particular topic, as you’d do in other speaking clubs. Instead, you’re part of an ecosystem that helps you develop your English.
This eco-system consists of 4 main elements:
Useful leisure
An English-language movie is an practical and easily available source of spoken English. Here you will hear how native speakers communicate in real life. You might learn words or grammar patterns which you never learn from any textbook.
But understanding a movie aimed at native speakers is challenging for learners of English. That is why you will have a workbook with basic information about the movie, interesting quotes, discussion questions, and key words and phrases. All of this will help you improve your language skills and become more confident in discussing the movie.
Pleasant company
Having people to talk to often changes learners’ attitude towards the learning process. The absence of speaking partners leads to a feeling stuck, like you’re barely trading water. All of these often make people quit learning English.
Companionship is what keeps you motivated. Knowing that soon you’ll meet people who want to hear what you have to say. Knowing that you have something interesting to share.
Professional assistance
As the organizer of the club, I’m always available in the community. You can ask me questions in the forum and get prompt response. I also offer monthly consultations for those who have questions about learning English. If you have an obstacle to learning a foreign language, I will help you to cope with it and establish a “healthy relationship” with English.
Consistency
Nothing has such an impact on your progress as consistency in doing the right things. In our movie club, you can form the necessary useful habit of practicing English using a convenient and customizable habit tracker.
For example, you decide to make it a habit to create 5 sentences every week with the words you want to “activate”. A visual tracker where you can easily see your progress at a glance is an additional incentive and reinforcement of your motivation.
Is our online speaking club right for you?
The “Watch Your English” community is for adult learners of English who enjoy watching movies and talking about them. Movie lovers can now combine “business with pleasure”: watch great movies, enjoy conversation and improve their English.
The club will be particularly useful for people who have already tried to learn English from movies but have not seen any significant results.
For example, if you regularly watch English-language TV series, but your speaking skills don’t improve, with the movie club you can see how to make it happen.
The movie workbook will help you better understand the movie, learn common and useful phrases, and prepare for the discussion after watching the film. This way, not only you get to enjoy the movie but also learn the language, turning passive skills into active.
It’s also an ideal place for people who are tired of learning on their own and are looking for English-speaking company. If you like interesting discussions and deeper conversations than small talk, “Watch Your English” is for you. You will be able to discuss relationships, politics, history, and other issues that are often raised in movies.
You won’t benefit from the club, if your level is below B1 and you have trouble forming understandable sentences. You are not likely to enjoy the movie club if you don’t talking about movies, or if you don’t have time to watch them.
How does “Watch Your English” movie club for learners of English work?
All participants have access to the website that contains all the information and resources you need.
First of all, you’ll have access to a mini-course for each movie we’re discussing. The course contains 2-4 short lessons that will help you understand the movie better and learn English from it. There you can find movie worksheets and complete them before attending the meeting. The workbook activities are carefully chosen to help you improve your listening comprehension and master vocabulary and grammar. They also prompt you to use the “new” language to express yourself in English.
There is a forum where you can share your ideas, links or resources. In the forum, you can also ask questions about what you did not understand after watching the movie.
You can use the habit tracker available for all participants of the community.
You will also see a list of scheduled online meetings which you can attend. If you’ve seen the movie and are ready to answer the discussion questions, you can sign up for the meeting. You can choose a convenient time on Saturday for the Eastern Hemisphere (morning for Europe and the Middle East) or on Sunday for the Western Hemisphere (morning for North and South America).
During the online meeting, you can actively use the words you have learned from the movie, movie worksheets, or the forum.
After the meeting, you will receive a video recording of the discussion if you want to analyze your mistakes. I will also share useful phrases that popped up during the chat on the forum.
As you can see, our community provides you with everything you need to learn English effectively: the resources, the people, and the support.
Topic variations in the speaking club
In other speaking clubs, each meeting is “dedicated” to a certain topic: holidays, charity, millennials, marriage, childhood, etc. Our movie talks are different because we discuss a specific movie.
In the process of watching, preparing and discussing a movie, we talk about a variety of topics. We’ve discussed relationships and marriage, historical events, parenting, space exploration, education, pets, and even philosophical questions like “what do you imagine an ideal society would look like”. Movie discussions allow you to delve deeply into various topics and touch on a wide variety of issues.
3 movie selection criteria
Since the goal of our community is to have interesting and deep conversations, I carefully choose the films we discuss. Speaking practice requires that you want to meet and talk. To do this, the movie should be understandable, interesting and useful in terms of the language. Therefore, when choosing films, I focus on several parameters:
- The discussion potential of the film. The films we discuss raise interesting questions. These are not superficial flics you watch once and forget because there’s nothing to talk about after watching. However, this does not mean that all our films are serious or tragic. The genres range from comedies to historical films, from musicals to dystopian action films. Here are some of the films we’ve already discussed.
- The language potential of the film. Although we sometimes watch and discuss historical films where dialogues sometimes sound a bit “outdated”, the vast majority of films contain modern dialogues. Phrases and grammar from them can be used in your real life.
- The “excitement” factor. I myself am a fan of movies that are impossible to tear myself away from or that I can think about for several days after watching. That’s why I choose such films for our discussions. Often, participants thank me for seeing a movie that they would hardly have noticed on their own.
The price and value of speaking clubs
There are free language clubs, such as the one organized by my colleague. However, most clubs still require a small fee or donation, where the cost can vary from $4 to $12 per meeting.
Our “Watch Your English” movie discussion club is a paid community. For $54 per quarter, you get access to the entire ecosystem where you can learn English the way you want, without spending extra money, and get everything you need to learn. This includes learning materials, the opportunity to communicate with like-minded people, and the support of an experienced teacher.
FAQs about participating in our movie discussion club
Who hosts this speaking club for learners of English who love movies?
The host is me, Tatiana Bilokin. I have been teaching English to adults for more than 20 years and I know from my experience as a learner and a teacher of nglish what difficulties stand in the way of making you a fluent and confident speaker of English
That’s why I can predict which tasks and questions will lead to interesting and relevant conversations. I develop workbooks for each individual movie to facilitate understanding of the film and to help people learn words and expressions and make them a part of your active vocabulary. My goal is to support people who want to understand movies better and express themselves in English more naturally and confidently.
Are we going to watch English-language movies together?
No, you can watch the movie whenever you want and however you want. Some people watch a movie in their native language first, and then in English later. Some watch with subtitles, and some watch without. Some people watch the movie in one sitting, while others watch a little bit every day.
How and where you watch the movie is your own business. The main thing at the meeting is that you can discuss the movie with others.
What does a conversation club meeting look like?
It’s an informal online conversation where everyone has the opportunity to express their opinion in English on each topic. You can see an example in this short video clip of one of the club’s discussions.
If there are more than 3 participants, I divide the discussion into breakout rooms. This way, everyone has the opportunity to voice their point of view and discuss it with the other person.
How to prepare for a movie discussion?
In this post, I explain how you can prepare and what benefits you get from preparation. At the very least, watch the movie and review the discussion questions.
I want to analyze and discuss a particular movie, but it is not in the club program…
If you want to analyze a particular movie, first of all, make a request on the forum – I may add it to the watchlist if it meets the requirements I described above.
If it doesn’t fit within the parameters of our community, you can purchase Backstage Pass program and I’ll develop a personal course for you based on this movie. Find out more about this type of class here.
Conclusion:
A conversation club is a unique opportunity not only to socialize but also to keep your English in shape, especially if you don’t have any other opportunities to speak English. It will make watching movies more interesting, help you learn more about the world and people, improve your language skills, boost your motivation and confidence, and help you meet interesting people.
