Learning English not only involves grammar and writing but it also involves culture. Language and culture always interrelate. The term pop culture became popular during the 1980s. It refers to the combination of products of culture like art, film, fashion, literature, dance, music, cyberculture, radio, and television preferred by many people. In the past, pop culture varied across different regions. However, the advent of smartphones and social media in this 21st century has a globalized pop culture. But how can we use pop culture that has become widely available to learn English? Well, Angel Wade, an English Teacher who cooperates with EssayKitchen, has prepared tips that will make you learn English in an easy and fun way.
YouTube
Nowadays, a Smartphone is easily accessible, and most people who own it spend a lot of their time on YouTube. The good news is that you can use YouTube to learn the English language. This platform has a lot of video lessons about various topics like grammar, pronunciations, and others. Music videos, reaction videos, popular songs, and ted talks are also great sources of learning the English language. One of the best ways to learn the English language is through lyrical videos. So, who knew that Katy Perry, Selena Gomez, Ed Sheeran, and the likes could be better mentors than your English as Second Language (ESL) teachers?
Advertisement
The advertising sector is among the largest industries in today’s world that can teach you more about English. Organizations spend a lot of money to make advertisements highly effective for the purpose of selling their products in an already saturated market. These ads enable you to practice rhetorical analysis and learn the sales and persuasion language.
Memes
The modern social media culture has led to the invention of memes, which exist in nearly every society. Memes are usually funny images shared through the internet that express different ideas and situations. Memes that often circulate over the social media bear similar words and phrases repeatedly with the same meanings and structure. These features help you learn new words and improve your vocabulary. By learning English memes, you can memorize your vocabulary and fathom the structure and phrases.
Movies and TV shows
Movies and TV series are also excellent tools to learn English pop culture. They help you pick up slangs and idioms, which can improve your English language. Native English speakers also pick idioms and slangs from these sources. Besides, talking about your favorite TV show or movie can be an excellent conversation starter when engaging an English speaker in a talk. Doing so helps you learn more about pop culture and English. Some movies and TV shows come with subtitles, which enable you to pair translations with dialogue and learn some new vocabulary. Writing companies such as https://writemyessayforme.co.uk/ helps you discover the best ways to improve your writing.
By watching TV series and movies, you can learn the depths of real, natural English without being immersed in it. It seems that watching people abroad is the next best thing to living abroad. The type of language in pop culture has a raw edge full of different dialects, accents, and slang. Ultimately, the goal of watching movies and TV shows in English is to help you feel more comfortable understanding a second language. This familiarity and comfort will establish a base to gain confidence in talking to native speakers.
Online Resources
Numerous resources used to learn pop cultures are available over the internet, and it is undeniable that they are excellent tools you can use to learn references of pop-culture. Sometimes, you may experience a situation in which you involve a native English speaker in a conversation, and they mention a reference you have no idea about. Such a scenario may allow you to learn English because you will want to search the reference in a dictionary. You can use the following free online sources to search for and learn pop culture references.
- Urban dictionary: Have you ever come across a person that used a reference you never understood? Look closer. The urban dictionary has all the colloquial speech and pop culture references in the English with definitions. It is one of the best materials to search for popular acronyms mostly used by English speakers while sending an SMS. Acronyms like ‘lol’, ‘Btw’, ‘Ftw’ are all available in the urban dictionary.
- BBC’s: The Podcast series, ”The English We Speak”, can help you learn English spoken in real life. It includes idioms, slang, and pop culture references.
- On the tip of my tongue: It is a Canadian website that enables you to learn various slang terms.
Blogs
Blogs can also provide you with English help. Unlike writers for newspapers and big magazines, smaller bloggers can write as they speak. To learn references of pop culture and speech, look for some blogs that interest you. Read them regularly while paying attention to the writing styles bloggers use. You can also seek writing help for the same. Take not of the phrases or words you seem not to understand then identify the words used, the words not used, and the pop culture reference used on the blogs. Doing so will help you learn the English language by incorporating bloggers’ styles while you practice the language.
Song Lyrics and Music Videos
Song lyrics and music videos are pieces of popular culture. Treat them as valid academic texts. Pop culture lyrics, for example, are literally accessible for everyone, although they have complex stylistic and rhetorical choices. For that reason, they offer an engaging path for improving the foundation skills that are significant for handling more complex tasks. Digging into your favorite songs increases your interest in figurative language. Today, modern poetry form occurs in the lyrics of songs. This encourages you to analyze metaphors, alliterations, syntax, and jargon found in the songs you listen to all the time.
Pop Culture Mentor Texts
You can use the mentor texts of pop culture to teach or learn satire. In the weird style of artificial intelligence, you may repurpose a style of a pop song, a rhyme scheme, and metaphor to craft a distinctly different message. Teaching or learning satire can be challenging, but making an effort to help others become satirists is a safe course to mastery.
Pop culture is a remarkable method you can use to know the secrets of learning the English language. It can help you communicate effectively with friends by making you sound like a native English speaker. With the growth of technology in this era, pop culture has become a norm, and people are engaging in social media and the internet to learn English. Regardless of the challenge you are experiencing in improving your English, the above tips give you a solution on how to use pop culture to improve your English language.
