Языковой Центр Welcome. Английский Язык Экзамены.

So watch, look or see?! Have been trapped by these words?

1. Can you __________ that man over there?
a. look
b. see
3. watch

2. Stop ___________ him. He can _________ us.
a. looking /watch
b. looking at/ see
c. watching at/ see
d. seeing/ see

3. Let's stay in and ___________ the match together!
a. watch
b. see
c. look

A lot of my students would say: “You know, I watched a movie in English yesterday and I understood almost everything”. I would be really happy if it could be so, but to be objective we need to clarify what this “everything” stands for. What I mean is that to see how much you can understand after watching some video, movie or an episode or after listening to a podcast, you need to do a follow-up task which will reveal how many details you managed to grab or if you could get only general information.
To make it crystal clear I want to say that I am not trying to discourage or demotivate people from watching videos in English - quite the opposite. I wanna help watch them in a productive way!
So here are some myths and truths
1. Let’s face it just watching clips in English or listening to English speech won’t lead to developing speaking skills.
2. Even if you try watching a movie in Japanese (or any other foreign language you don’t speak), you will understand a general idea. Let’s thank actions that take place in this movie. That is the reason why kids technically don’t care which language the cartoon characters speak cuz they do understand them anyway.
3. Listening as well as Reading are receptive skills (which means you get information) while Speaking and Writing are productive skills. And they both greatly contribute to language learning and can’t be involved into the learning process apart from each other.
4. So when you start watching/ listening to something in English, you need to set a goal: 1. I am doing it just to relax or kill my time ( if so, then just enjoy your movie and have a whale of time) 2. I am doing it to learn the language
5. If your goal is # 2, then you need to make it clear that no matter what you watch/ listen, there should be a target (to get some information, to pick up some words, to answer the questions afterwards and so on). This is the main reason why we actually listen to someone or something in real life situations and this is our prior aim when we learn a foreign language – to understand a speaker and to get what we need.
6. So the thing is there ALWAYS should be a task to do as a follow-up.
See the video for more information!
7. Technically a universally accepted structure of a listening task is

Here is the phrase you are most likely to hear from a native speaker: " What's up, man (mate, dude and so on)?"
Some people get really frustrated cuz they don't know what they are expected to answer back 😁 You know what I'm talking about, right?!
So the answer depends on a situation the question is asked in.
See what kind of options you can have.
Be careful with the last one - it's a sarcastic way and can be used with close friends only 😉