Learn English with movies and TV shows: shadow them line by line

Try a line from a film now

Open a Harry Potter line“What did you do to your glasses?” Hear it to the end, say it after the actor, then open Compare and play your take beside the original.

Is watching movies enough to learn English?

Watching trains listening: you hear English at its natural speed and pick up words and phrases in the situation they belong to. Speaking is a different skill. Your mouth learns it by saying the line out loud and hearing yourself, which is why many people understand films well and still stumble when they talk.

So keep watching, and add one short step: after a scene, choose three to five lines and say each one after the actor until it comes out the way you heard it. Ten minutes of that a day does more for your speaking than a whole film watched in silence. Saying the line along with the actor, once you can, is shadowing.

How to shadow a movie or TV scene

1. Pick a short official clip from the film’s or show’s own YouTube channel, with English captions written by people rather than generated.
2. Understand it first. Watch the scene once with whatever subtitles help you follow the story.
3. Play one line two or three times. If it is fast, slow the video to 0.75.
4. Say it after the actor. Choose After the speaker, press Record and say the whole line when it ends.
5. Compare and repeat. Open Compare, play your take beside the original, and go again until Sada shows all your words, then move on to the next line.
6. Come back tomorrow. Say the same lines the next day, then try them with the actor in With the speaker mode.

Lines from a film: Harry Potter

Three lines from an official compilation of scenes on the films’ own channel, in British English. Each one is under three seconds long, so they suit a beginner at A1 or A2. Tap a line to open it in Sada in After the speaker mode.

1. 0:12 What did you do to your glasses?

   A question that starts with “What”. Listen for whether “did you” is said in full or joined into one sound.

2. 5:34 Please don't ask me to say it again.

   A request. Listen for the stress on “again”.

3. 8:35 I really couldn't care less.

   An idiom: “couldn’t care less”. Listen for how the contraction is said, and which word gets the stress.

More: Learn English with Harry Potter: eight lines with what to listen for.

Lines from a TV show: Friends

Sitcom dialogue is everyday spoken English: short questions and quick replies. These three lines come from two official clips on the TBS channel, in American English.

1. 0:05 Isn't that a kind of sushi?

   A question that starts with “Isn’t”. Listen for where the voice goes at the end, and compare it with a plain “Is that a kind of sushi?”.

2. 0:18 Are you two talking about the same baby?

   A question about “the same baby”. Listen for where the voice falls, and whether “talking about” is said smoothly.

3. 0:22 Hey, have you started thinking of names yet?

   Listen for “have you” and for the “yet” at the end.

More: Learn English with Friends: nine lines from two official clips.

Can you learn English from songs?

Yes, for listening and vocabulary: a song stays in your memory and you can play it many times without getting bored. But the melody stretches syllables and moves the stress and rhythm, so a word in a song is not said the way it is in speech. Listen to songs for their words, and practise speaking with spoken lines from a film, a show or a talk.

If you want to practise a particular song, paste the official video’s link into Sada if it has captions. Sada is made for speech, not singing: it compares your words and timing and does not measure the tune. This page does not quote song lyrics, which belong to their writers.

Learn English from YouTube: any captioned video

Sada works with any YouTube video that has usable captions: a scene, a lesson, a cartoon episode or a talk. Paste the video’s link into Sada, or change youtube.com to sadaspeak.com in its address, and it is split into lines you practise one at a time. More on that in shadow any YouTube video.

English-teaching channels are a good start before films, because many of them speak more slowly and clearly. Here is a line from a short lesson:

1. 0:47 Hello. Can I get a coffee, please?

   Ordering in a café, from a short BBC Learning English lesson. Listen for “Can I”: are the two words said as one?

For famous talks sorted by level, see the talk library. Starting from zero? See shadowing for beginners.

What Sada does, and what it doesn’t

Sada plays the line from the video itself, records your voice on your device, shows which words it recognised and compares your timing with the speaker’s. It does not grade individual sounds, and it does not measure accent or intonation, so judge those by ear as you play your take beside the original.

Sada works with YouTube only, not with Netflix or other streaming services. If a channel removes a clip or stops it being embedded, it stops working in Sada too.

Sada is not affiliated with or endorsed by TBS, the Harry Potter channel or BBC Learning English. Each video plays in YouTube’s own player from its official channel, Sada keeps no copy of it, and the quoted lines are the short caption lines the practice needs.

Keep going

• Shadow the person you want to sound like: speakers, actors and shows
• English conversation practice: filmed dialogues between two people
• Listen and repeat practice: real lines from short to long
• What is shadowing?