In this day and age, we could easily watch TV series on TV or pick an episode on the Internet, there are options such as American, British, South Korean, Chinese, or even Thai. As one of the Gen Z, I’m profoundly influenced by TV series.
Growing up in Hong Kong, it’s normal that my first contact with TV series is in Cantonese. It was the time when watching dramas on the Internet or streaming services like Netflix and HBO were yet to be popular. Watching dramas with my family was my favorite hours in a day at that time, we would sit on the sofa, open a box of Häagen-Dazs ice cream or a can of Lay’s chips (sour cream & onion is our all-time favorite, even until now!) and pass the snacks around.
I found my interest in American dramas (mostly) now, and I couldn’t stress enough how helpful they are with my English proficiency (though I still suck at tenses and the use of prepositions, and still get a bit confused when speaking English without having a script in my mind). If I recall correctly, the first American drama I watched was The Mentalist, casting Simon Baker, and I watch it with my family on TV. But as any TV drama fan would know, the episodes or seasons broadcast on TV might not always be the latest ones, so my dad bought DVDs of different seasons (yup, we still watch DVDs at that time), and that was the first time I binge-watch a drama.
Ever since, I love watching dramas (or discovering new dramas that I have yet to watch and am interested in) on TV, and I would watch them on the Internet so that I could watch a number of episodes in a row, instead of waiting for an episode once a week. My first binge-watch TV series that is not watched with my family is Prison Break 5 or 6 years ago. I was so obsessed with it that I finished the whole drama in a month. Then, I became tired of waiting for a drama to end, I only search for those that are already ended, like HBO’s huge hit Game of Thrones. I watched 3-4 episodes per day, and only start at midnight until the sun rises. My latest binge-watching drama was Grey’s Anatomy, which my highest record is 8 episodes per day.
My point is, watching so many dramas for so long have improved my English proficiency tremendously, I learnt tons of vocabularies, especially from medical dramas like The Good Doctor and Grey’s Anatomy, and by listening to the sentences and watching the subtitles at the same time, my grammar and the use of tenses actually improved, as I would read my sentences in my mind to see if it sounds weird or not. Watching dramas also taught me how to deal with different emergencies, like be calm and resourceful when situations happen. And whenever my friends ask for advice to improve their English proficiency, watching dramas is always my top 1 advice.
I have been and will always love watching dramas. What about you, do you like watching dramas? Have you ever watched the dramas mentioned above? What kind(s) of them do you particularly like or dislike, and do you binge-watch them as I do?
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