FILMS FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

Of late, and at my daughter Laura´s behest, I have been watching Netflix´s House of Cards. Wags have it that the stuff found on this platform is superb entertainment. I have access thanks to my daughter Lorraine´s charitable offer to admit me to her channel, again at her behest. I am sold on the virtues of the Internet for language learning. Online you can find just about everything, and plenty of tools, to aid and guide you in your foreign-language acquisition. Watching films in the original language is an activity I highly recommend. However, last night, watching another episode of House of Cards, I was intrigued by the language used by the politicians involved. The scriptwriters make a tour de force to instill the dialog with witticisms, puns, proverbs, sayings, and funny linguistic sleight of hands, quick and brisk, which, to me and in the end, sound faux. People, not even politicians, talk like that. So witty, so clever, so quick on the draw, so swift in the funny retort, all make us doubt that this is a reflection of any type of reality. And then, to make it worse, actors mumble and whisper to themselves. They seem to forget that there is an audience out there that needs to understand what is going on. The congressman-turned-vice president speaks funny. Is it because he is faking a Southern accent? Then, why am I writing about this? Because I still urge you to watch original-language films, by all means, but the right ones. Watch films where actors speak distinctly and clearly and where the dialog is true to the realities of language. Robert McKee in an interview says that American actors are hard to understand, and he knows a thing or two about the film industry.