Passive learning, movies and more. There’s lots of language trends that come and go. Find out which ones are worth paying attention to in this interview with Cara Leopold.

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Choose how you want to enjoy this episode – video with subtitles, podcast on the go, or read the blog version below.

The Video

The Podcast

A Perspective on Passive Learning, Movies & Other Trends with Cara Leopold

Links from this Conversation

Cara’s website: https://leo-listening.com/ 

Cara’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LeoListening/

Cara’s Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caraleopold/ 

Cara’s Pinterest profile: https://www.pinterest.fr/leolistening/ 

TL;DR – Lessons from this Conversation

It’s always interesting to look back, around and predict forward on language learning. There’s phases of trends and methods that have come and go. It’s interesting to see what stands the test of time, and to think about what will shape language learning into the future too.

This is what I discuss with Cara Leopold in this episode of How To Learn a Language.

Cara Leopold is the creator of the Leo Listening Movie Club where she helps film-loving English learners understand and discuss movies together so they can master conversational English. 

Cara teaches English with a focus on movies. Seeing as movies are often considered something ‘passive’ or ‘extra’, I was keen to chat with Cara about why she thinks they’re a trend that sticks around, and why they deserve to.

Transcript

Lindsay:

Hello, welcome back to How to Learn a Language.
The podcast all about how to learn a language.
I am very excited to share another interview episode with you and this time I’m speaking with Cara Leopold of Leo Listening.
We have a really cool conversation.
It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to kind of catch up properly so that it was really great to just Talk before we hit record about what we wanted to talk about because Cara is all about film and using film for language learning in really effective ways.
So we have that kind of crossover because I love film and obviously I have watch and learn available for you which is a super very easy quick to digest mini course all about how to make the most of film and TV for language learning and a free film and TV study pack as well that’s available.
I’ll link to all of these in the show notes for this episode too.

But I know that it’s sometimes really easy to get reduced to just that one thing and I wanted to talk to Cara about something a little bit different.
So we talk a bit about trends, kind of language trends that we’ve seen and whether that’s a good or a bad thing.
Perhaps maybe it’s time to chill out and just expect that there’s more than one way to learn a language.
There’s no one Holy Grail way that is the best of everything.
And so it’s really great to talk with someone And we talk about film and all of that stuff, we talk more about Cara’s film club as well, which is coming back in September.
Check the links in the show notes if you’re interested in that, because there’s a little mini kind of taster week happening at the start of I’m talking about September 2023 and then it’s opening up after that as well.
So have a look at that if that is something you’re interested in and yeah, enjoy our conversation whether you’re learning English or any other language.

I feel like there’s going to be something good for you in this one.
All right, I’ll speak to you very soon.
Enjoy.
Bye.
Cara, hello, welcome.

Cara:
Hi Lindsay, thanks for having me.

Lindsay:
No problem, I’m very excited to be speaking with you again.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to sit down and have a proper chat.
I’m excited about our topic as well for today.
Before we get into that though, I do want to give you the opportunity to introduce yourself.

Cara:
My name is Cara Leopold and I run a website called Leo Listening which is for English learners and what I’m doing nowadays is bringing together English learners who love movies and we’re watching and discussing them together.

Lindsay:
As we were just getting ready and talking about this and thinking about the work that you do, I feel like we’ve really landed on a really interesting point of discussion.
Language trends, how things come and go in and out of fashion.
I feel like movies are part of this idea of passive language learning.

Just sit down and watch a film and you’ll be fluent in a week.
I don’t know about you but as a native English speaker, the amount of times where you meet someone and they say, “oh, I learned English watching friends or watching the Simpsons” and you think, “how?
What else did you do?”
There must be more to the puzzle.

Cara:
Yeah, I agree.
That’s like selective memory.

Lindsay:

Yeah, that’s very true.
I think that must be what it is.
But you made a really good point as well about that, this kind of switch as well.
Maybe you said in the past 10 years you’ve noticed something in terms of language trends.

Cara:
Well, yeah, I would say it’s kind of to do with the development of technology, right?
So I think a website like Itoki started in the late 2000s, right?
And then during the 2010s that has all really developed all these platforms where you can find a tutor and learn a language online, usually in a one-on-one setting.

So it’s you and your tutor and obviously that’s been marketed as, you know, it’s super convenient.
It’s online.
Could work out a lot cheaper than traditional classes if your tutor is based in a country where the cost of living is lower, etc.
And I feel like that was a real backlash to the traditional format of, you know, group, language classes, group, evening classes, whatever, where, you know, you had to travel somewhere and then you’re in a group, so people always assume, you know, in a group, you’re not getting the speaking time
that you deserve.
The internet age has made us all the children of the nobility because now we can get private lessons cheaper than they would have been in the past.

Private tutoring was always reserved for the wealthiest people but that’s kind of changed in the internet age where everybody can have their online language tutor.
So, but I feel like maybe another change is coming and maybe that’s to do with post-pandemic, maybe people want to get out of the house and not be on Zoom or whatever platform all the time and maybe they do want to connect with people in real life, in groups, And so maybe, I don’t know, we’ll have
to see how it evolves but I think maybe in the 2020s, group learning could come back in some way and obviously it could also come back in an online format and in existing online formats because there is the rise now of communities for language learning and things like this.
So yeah, I feel like there could be a sea change coming maybe.
Yeah, and it’s interesting this idea that group learning is the way and then it completely flips to know one-on-one is better and you’re saying maybe there’s also now post-COVID this flip back towards, but I need people and then the group stuff comes back again.

Lindsay:
And as I said to you, before we hit record, why does it have to be one or the other?
With these sorts of language trends, why do you think that is?

Cara:

Yeah well I suppose you could say that it’s what perhaps it’s to do with like capitalism and marketing so if people are selling you on one particular thing they want to sort of discredit the other methods.
But I’ve thought for some time that basically everything works in language learning so every single method that has ever existed from grammar translation to learning in your sleep to comprehensible input to Basically, everything has the potential to work and it might not work for you right now at
the stage you’re at, or it might not work for you because your personality doesn’t gel with that or whatever, but it all has the potential to work.
So I’ve worked in a school here where they used, oh gosh, what’s that method called?
It doesn’t really exist anymore, it involves a lot of using creasing air, rods, the silent way.
So it just so happens that this language school where I live in Busançon, they in France, they actually learned the silent way with the founder of the method.
And it was actually like kind of developed from maths in the beginning, hence the rods of different sizes.

It was applied to language learning and I saw some really, really people who had started there as beginners and who were now intermediate whose English was really, really good and they had done everything using the silent way but that’s a method that’s kind of gone out of fashion and I don’t think
there’s many people who know how to teach it anymore and a lot of the people at that school are now retired so kind of the I don’t really know if they’re using that method so heavily, and I’ve worked at a school in Switzerland which was very heavy on the grammar translation method, translating from
English to French and back again, and again some of the students there, I could see they were getting really great results with that.
I just want to say, I really do think it all has the potential to work, but it just depends.

Lindsay:
What a great answer, it depends.
I don’t know the one method that works because all of them work.
You’re like speaking to my heart.

This is like the foundation of everything in Language Life.
When I work with people in Language Life, it’s like you need to be at the centre of your language learning because, as you say, everything has the potential to work.
Those varying factors Part of that is you and your personality and the time that you have when you’re going to be learning and how focused you’re going to be, all of these things that are you dependent, that are your variables.
This past weekend as we’re recording this, I went to visit Kerstin, who I’m sure you know Cara, and we did a triathlon together, which was really cool because we’ve been wanting to do it since 2020. 2020. It took a while to get there.
But yeah, I always say when I go to somewhere new, like I’d never been to her town before, I like to find like A second hand bookshop and see if they’ve got any language books.
It’s like my souvenir, like I don’t want the magnet or the keyring.
If there’s like a language book that I don’t, for the language that I don’t have yet on my shelf, then that’s really cool.

And I’m like, ah, and I remember I got this book in this place.
And anyway, I picked up one, learn Hebrew in seven days.
And I thought, oh, I’ve got nothing for Hebrew, this is like £1.50.
Yeah, you’re coming home with me, let’s go.
£1.50.
And as I was looking at it just last night actually, and I’m like, oh, this is kind of like it became obvious to me that it was kind of an Amazon self-published book, which is cool.
But then I looked up the author and found an article that actually it was like an Amazon catfish quote-unquote of Someone who, this wasn’t even their name, they used a fake pseudonym to get people to ghost-write these books essentially.

And it was just a bit like, oh, that feels kind of weird and shady and is this book now still good?

Cara:
Is this written by a Hebrew teacher or just someone who googled it?

Lindsay:
I don’t know.
But still, even with that resource being sort of as on the fence as it is, there’s still something that I can learn from that and I think that that is also always then dependent on you.
Like you say, everything works, even the book from when I was in catfish.
Has potential to teach me some Hebrews still.
Every book, every course, whatever, they do tend to make some, you know, sometimes quite substantial claims about what they’re going to help you achieve, which may be a bit overstated, you know, because obviously you can’t learn a language in seven days.

Cara:

I mean, you can get going in seven days.
You can have enough to get started.

Lindsay:
That’s exactly it, and I was most surprised with this particular book was how it said learn Hebrew in seven days, but then there were 20 chapters, not even 21. 21. So not like, oh, three chapters a day.
I can’t even divide 20 equally by seven days!
Do I just have a day of rest on the Sunday?
One less chapter?

Cara:
This is what I don’t like is this idea that language learning can be weighed and measured in this way because there’s a lot of books and courses and programs claiming x things in x days or have an x number of minute conversation after x days.

I don’t really think I can understand wanting to put it into containers and weigh it and measure it but I I don’t actually think you can and ultimately I think the way to measure your progress is often how you feel and how you feel might not match up with what score you get on a test but that
doesn’t really matter because if you feel good about using the language I think that is the real measure of success, no matter how good or bad you are objectively in the air quotes.

Lindsay:
Learning a language does not end.
Never mind if it’s in seven days.
It just doesn’t end.
I’m still learning new words in English all the time and that’s my native language.
So there’s always going to be something new to learn.

You’re never going to be fluent in the sense that we think of fluency.
How do you think How do you think fluent exists?
How does that exist in the world of kind of language trends?
Is that goal a trend that has like appeared in more recent years?
Has that always been the goal back when people were doing things like grammar translation?
What do you think about the word in this relation to language trends?

Cara:
Really interesting, I don’t know if you’ve watched the evolution of the English teaching market over the last few years, maybe not so much because you’re not quite so much directly involved these days, but you know when I started it was very popular to call your online teaching business ‘English with…’.
So I started in 2016, so that’s when English with Lucy started, which is obviously grown to become one of the biggest education channels.
So it was very trendy to call your business ‘English with’ It was trendy to talk about fluency, you know, sort of in vague terms, like you’re going to get fluent or whatever.
And then, and I’ve noticed some, oh yeah, and now, yeah, and people, then it was okay to say stuff like speak like a native, and now if you say that you get cancelled, so you have to There’s really been a real evolution in terms of the way people are talking about what they’re doing.
I think some English teachers have seen how people’s websites have evolved and how they’re doing more specific things than just talking about fluency.
Some people are moving more towards communication skills, business skills, succeeding in your life in general, not just in English.
Yeah, there’s definitely been a change for sure.

That’s a really good question, historically.
Is that what people were aiming for in the past?
I don’t think so.
I imagine when grammar translation was more prevalent, it was having knowledge of the literature of a foreign language and being able to read its literature and poetry.
Yeah, the goals were different.
I think that’s really interesting because, again, you measure your success by the goals that are deemed, you know, these are the right ones and the other stuff doesn’t matter.
So it’s funny how that can also evolve over time.

Lindsay:

Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s good to hear that you’ve noticed, particularly with English, there’s this kind of shift and evolution and really thinking about the language that people are using in terms of What they say their things will achieve, essentially.
I think that’s really important.
We’re in the field of language, so I very much overthink language a lot.
I’m really conscious of like, is that the right word?
And sometimes you do just have to settle.

So I get it that like there was a phase when fluent was the right word and that’s what resonated and still is in the same way.
Learn Hebrew in seven days is what people think they want because that’s the thing is I find with language learning.
It’s something that sits on a lot of people’s one day lists, right?
A lot of people’s wish lists and one day in my life I would love to be fluent in Japanese or I’d love to speak Spanish etc etc.
And that’s great, I love that there is this desire to want to learn languages and to know more about the world but often it’s the effort that then gets minimised and underestimated with something like Learn Hebrew in seven days that then Kind of makes people feel like they’re not cut out for it when
they finish Learn Hebrew in seven days and actually feel like they can’t speak much Hebrew.
Maybe they have a start but they feel like they can’t do as much as perhaps they felt they were promised and therefore the fault is on them and not the resource.

Cara:

And that self-blame is so prevalent and I just want to see less of that, you know, more So maybe less marketing and more realistic.
Yeah, but I think people need to have realistic goals and I could see how that gets twisted with the way product names are sort of formulated because everyone’s going to buy the thing that says speak it in seven days.
But actually like there’s a million sort of, there’s also, there should really be a subtitle defining what speak looks like after seven days.
Results may actually explain what it looks like.
I think one of the problems is you’re always sort of comparing with your native language to a certain extent, even though you know you shouldn’t.
So obviously the thing that is nowadays completely effortless and you can’t remember learning it and everything is easy.
Obviously in comparison a new language is going to look impossible, especially at the beginning.

These things don’t really help and I can understand how that leads to a high failure rate, but you have to know what you’re getting into and that’s a long-term relationship with your language, not a fling, if you want to go far with it.
To move back to the topic of trends, what are the trends have you noticed where things have kind of flip flopped from one to the other?
And maybe back again.
And maybe back again.
I think yeah we talked about sort of like passive methods didn’t we?
And yeah it’s funny because when you listen to polyglots talk about what they do, doesn’t sound very passive, sounds like a lot of work.
When you look at, I read a bit about what Luca does and it involves sort of like translating back and forth I mean translation.

But it’s like, wow, okay, people think this dude is amazing at languages.
He obviously is.
People think he pretends to be Italian when he’s actually American.
He’s not.
But he has worked really hard.
He’s done things that a lot of people won’t do.

And I find that’s the same for all the polyglots.
Like the success stories are often quite boring because it’s like, well, these people, they just super nerd out on languages and they worked really hard.
And they weren’t doing passive listening.

Lindsay:

That’s not the story people want to hear, right?
People want to hear that there was like a trick, a method, a trademark, or they are a genius or something.
Cara:

Yeah, some sort of language savant and they just, yeah, they’re miraculous and you’ll never be like that.
But in fact, the actual common denominator is work.

Lindsay:
With anything no one wants work to be the answer.

That’s why diet culture is so prevalent even still.
No one wants to work for good things.

Cara:
Yeah, no, I think that’s true.
Again, that’s a promise.
Another marketing promise in a lot of areas.
It will be easy and it will be fun, but I think it’s better to have realistic expectations.
Those stories about, you know, you mentioned watching TV with friends and I’ve talked about this before, it’s so different when you’re a teenager and you are able to watch a ton of friends in your bedroom and then when you’re an adult you’re probably not going to have time to do that and even the

people who say they learned through TV like They went to school in the majority of cases.
They were in a country with an education system that obliged them to go to school and they did learn something at school as much as people moan about their English classes at school.
They did come away with something otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to understand friends at all.
They did have some basics.
My partner said to me, ‘oh yeah, I got really good at English because I was watching or listening to comedy podcasts’, you know, a lot of stand-up comedians now, they have very, very popular podcasts and he said he learned English through that but he was obviously forgetting that he learned it all the
way through school.
And at university I’m not saying he was particularly good at that time but that obviously gave him the foundation that meant that could then listen to these podcasts which obviously was very hard at first but again he spent a lot of time doing it so we come back to work.

Lindsay:

So how do movies and like things like podcasts but in particular movies thinking about the work that you do How does that fit with the concept of work?
When it is something that we think, I don’t have the time like maybe when I was a teenager to sit around and watch friends in my bedroom.
Now it’s more intentional if I’m going to sit and watch something.
How do we then make that something that can be Productive for language learning and not just, oh, it’s been a long day, I’m just going to slug out, but the audio is in French and so I’m in French mode.
There’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, I’d like to do that.
No, there’s nothing wrong with that.

Cara:
So that’s kind of why I guess I created a movie club.

The way we approach it is that we spend a whole month on one movie so not just watching it but also discussing it and then working on speaking and listening skills and using specific scenes and also reading a lot of extra stuff about the movie like reviews and watching video essays on YouTube.
It’s not just a one and done like you watch the movie and then you move on to the next one.
It’s a full month of a deep dive so that by the end you have a really good sense of what it’s about, you know, not just in terms of I understood the dialogue but also I understood this movie’s themes and its messages and I had some really interesting discussions about that.
That’s really the ultimate goal is to discuss the movie and listen to the other club members and what they thought of it and come away with insights and understanding of the plot of the characters and of what your fellow club members thought of it.
It’s quite a deep approach and it’s not just one and done on your couch, but that’s the first step.
The first step is watching the movie, enjoying it, immersing yourself in it and just following the story so you can start forming some opinions.
We don’t start off with you must understand the whole thing.

A lot of the understanding comes after because then my students go off and they read a bunch of things about the movie and they come back to me and they say things like, I understand the symbols in this movie better, I didn’t really get it at first when I watched it but now the extra stuff you sent
us that explained really well, what it was about.
So it takes time and I think the things that I’m very transparent about my process and I share what I get my students in the movie club to do and people could do that on their own.
But it would be hard.
It would be hard to organize all that yourself.
And that’s why I have the club.
And as we said at the beginning, you know, language trends, post pandemic, a shift of wanting a bit more connection, even if it’s online, That idea of group lessons as well, there’s advantages to that.

One of them as you said being you don’t have to then create and do all of this back-end work yourself to take a movie further.

That’s your role, Cara.
Which ones are going to be useful for?
She’s happy to outsource that to me.
She’s busy herself teaching Italian.
She doesn’t need to worry also about teaching herself English.
It’s nice to get that support and support from others in the club.

We also have a twist on the one-on-one lesson because now the club members are meeting up with each other without me.
So they’re doing these meet-ups together where they discuss the movie and I supply questions and the system that matches them and some of the logistics.
But then they are discussing among themselves and I think that’s really important as well is to get out of the one-on-one bubble of always needing to talk to a teacher and going and talking to other Other learners, you don’t have to have the teacher with you all the time.
They have really fascinating discussions together and that’s brilliant.
That gives them more speaking time and they don’t need me to be there.
That frees up time for me to do other things.
I love that initiative.

They’ve taken the initiative.

Lindsay:
I have a couple of questions.
Firstly, what language slash languages are the films in?

Cara:
They’re all in English, I’m trying to think if some of them had occasional bits of other languages, we watched the Mule with Clint Eastwood.
It’s about an old man who becomes a drug runner for a Mexican cartel, so some bits of the movie are in Spanish.
That’s probably the only example I can think of.
In English, usually Hollywood movies try to have a variety of accents so that people are getting exposure to different types of English.

Lindsay:

So does that mean it’s just for English learners?

Cara:
Yes, I mean it could be cool to just have people who love movies joining it, but there is a big component of English improvements.
I’ve had English learners and also teachers of English who are not native speakers.
I hate framing it like that, but teachers who They are always improving their English as well for their job and who are interested in different ways of teaching.
So everybody’s got a fairly high level of English to join.

Lindsay:
The deep dive side of it, the going beyond, oh it’s been a long day, just gonna chill and watch the movie to start us off, that’s the springboard, then what happens?
What does that deep dive actually involve?

Cara:

Yeah, so I give them a bunch of resources to understand the movie.
So in fact in the new version of movie club I’m actually putting together the whole archive of resources so we’ve watched like 30 movies at this point so people will have access to all the archive for all the films and that archive looks like A document with kind of behind the scenes resources to
understand the movie so some of them you can watch before like the trailer or reading the IMDP page and then some of them are better suited for reading or watching afterwards because you know it’s a movie review and they usually have spoilers or sort of video essays on YouTube that go into a bit
more analysis of the film so that’s one element And then we also work a lot with movie clips.
So the club members will watch clips and then do kind of listening and writing exercises based on small bits of dialogue to work on their listening skills and they also record themselves to work on pronunciation.
And then they also use clips for speaking and or writing tasks, so watching clips and answering questions.
So, we don’t do a deep dive into every single second of the movie, but by the time you’ve done the listing and speaking tasks and pronunciation tasks for those clips, plus you’ve chosen some resources that you want to dive deeper into, and you’ve had the discussion on our forum and you’ve met with other people who’ve watched the movie to discuss it.
You understand it pretty well.
We’re also going to have a live discussion together in a group and that’s another chance to… I think this is what’s really important and this is what some people don’t like in language learning is the idea of repeating something but it’s not boring repetition because it’s obviously different every
time you write on the forum and you respond to other people’s Observations and they give you insights that you haven’t had before or you chat to people one on one or you chat in the group.
So that’s like multiple touch points where you’re articulating your opinions on the movie but you’re also learning more about it every time you hear someone else’s point of view.
So I think that’s what makes it really enriching and a deep dive is just, yeah, like reiterating kind of the same task in a slightly different way.

Lindsay:
Nice, nice.

I have two questions.
The first one is a simple yes or no.
Can movies be a resource that improves every area of your language learning?

Cara:
Honestly, I think so if you do it, the way I do it, because I mean something else we could do that I haven’t really done is also write movie reviews, but then I would say the club members practice writing a lot because a lot of the sharing of opinions and answering questions about the movie is in
written format.
So actually, yeah, they get to do a bit of everything, listening, reading, writing, speaking.
So I think it has the potential to, but it requires a lot of organisation and effort to do that.

Lindsay:

That’s what I talk about a lot in Watch and Learn as well, is sort of expanding the ways that you think about a film as well.
So if someone is listening now and they’re like, this sounds amazing, but I’m learning Korean, for example.
What would be your advice?

Cara:
Could potentially be to create their own movie club?
That’s advice that I give.
I think everybody should be watching movies with at least one other person, so it could be as simple as that.
It doesn’t have to be a big group, it could just be you and one person, that makes it a lot easier.

You only need one other person.
Otherwise, there is… I don’t know if you’re familiar with Lauren who runs the language TV club.
Yeah, she offers a lot of languages so that could be something to look into.
The only thing about that is, and the reason I don’t work with TV series is I really like doing the deep dive over a month and if you’re kind of working with a series, I guess the expectation is to watch an episode like every week or every two weeks and for me that pace is just a bit too fast.
But it’s obviously more feasible with a TV show, especially if the episodes are relatively short.
A show is generally easier to follow than a movie, you’re not just watching it, it’s not just a one-off, it’s something that’s building every week in your So that could be something to look into, but otherwise the simplest step would be create your own.
I would really like for more teachers to offer more movie clubs, not just in other languages, but even in English.

Because every club can have a slightly different focus or involve different films, because for instance we don’t really watch recent movies.
So you know now all the films are basically superhero movies or franchises.
You haven’t noticed.
They’ve all got man in the title.

Lindsay:
Well, and Barbie.

Cara:
Why does that movie even exist?
Can someone explain what’s going on?

So there are franchises or I guess that’s kind of like an after a sort of merchandising thing isn’t it?
Normally you have the film and then they sell the toys but now the toys are creating.

Lindsay:
I did read that apparently it’s the first of a few.
I read something like Mattel has The sort of storyboarded like 32 different films, like a Hot Wheels high chase adventure.
The rest of them sound crazy and like just completely off the wall.
Barbie actually I’m very much looking forward to.

Cara:
Oh are you?

I’ve seen there’s some big actors in it.
It was Margot Robbie.

Lindsay:
The trailer?
Mmm, chef’s kiss.

Cara:
Oh really?
Okay, maybe I should stop.
I’m like a sort of angry old woman who’s like, I really didn’t.

And I haven’t even looked at the trailer.
I’m just like the concept.
I just don’t even understand.
Or movies these days are like franchises.
So like now we’re at Fast and Furious 67.
We don’t watch movies like that, but no judgement if you want to watch that kind of movie.
Yeah, because if somebody created a movie club for those ones, I don’t quite know what they would do because for me a lot of those movies don’t have enough interesting dialogue or character development or plot.

But again, maybe I am judging and I have no idea and they’re actually very profound films.
I’m just making the point that it would be cool if there were more movie clubs or book clubs or podcast clubs, but basically clubs built around content that you’re not just kind of consuming on your own, that you’re then discussing with other people and going deep into To the extent that sometimes,
for example, we watched the movie Invictus, which is kind of like a docu-fiction, docu-drama, it’s about South Africa winning the 1995 World Cup.
So it’s post-apartheid, Nelson Mandela has been elected and his idea is to reunite South Africa around Certain symbols like the rainbow flag, the idea of the rainbow nation and most significantly around the rugby team, which is challenging because the rugby team was all very much associated with the
apartheid, white South Africa and the black population just doesn’t hate this rugby team basically because of all it symbolises.
And he tries to give it a different symbolism and meaning and it works in the end because they do win the 1995 Bugbee World Cup against all the odds.
And yeah that actually led to at least one person in the club because the book doesn’t really go into the sort of pre-apartheid era.

It’s very like forward-looking even if it does touch on it a little bit.
So I suggested to my club members that they read Trevor Noah’s memoir, Born a Crime.
It really goes into what it was actually like and what it was like for someone like him who technically shouldn’t have been born given his two parents’ story.
But obviously it gives you an idea of what it was like.
You can go so deep potentially with movies.
But maybe not with Fast and Furious 67 or whatever.

Lindsay:
I think you can.

I’m remaining an optimist, I’m excited to see the movie club, the Fast and Furious movie club specifically because there are so many that it would last a long time.

Cara:
I know that’s true, I mean that’s where it’s got potential and Vin Diesel is bloody hard to understand so you need like 67 films to be able to understand his dialogue to crack the Vin Diesel code.

Lindsay:
I feel like you’ve touched on this a little bit there but you said something a little while back that I’ve written on my hand because I wanted to ask.
And you said just in kind of in passing in what you were saying that we should all watch movies as part of our language learning.
Why?

Cara:
Well, I don’t think you have to, but I do think they can give you an insight into the culture that is kind of like, particularly immersive, you know, because as much as you can learn about cultures from, say, podcasts or books or anything else, you know, when you’re watching a movie you actually get
to see How people interact and how they move, how they stand, you know, are they close to each other or are they further away?

You get that, it’s almost like 3D immersion, I know it’s like flat and you’re not actually in the movie with them.
But yeah, I think it’s a special gateway into the world, even if it is yes, it’s a fantasy world.
In a lot of cases, it’s not exactly real life, but still it is informed by real life.
But yeah, there’s a fantastic quote by Martin Scorsese that I’m probably going to misquote.
And he says something like, now more than ever we need to talk to each other, listen to each other, understand each other and movies are the best way of doing this.
So, you know, there’s also that.
There’s developing empathy through watching movies and Watching characters do things where you’re like, ‘why did you do that? That was stupid.’
When we sit down and we really analyse what’s going on, we can have compassion for people and the choices they make and what happens in a story and how characters evolve.
I think it helps us grow as people.
You can get that from books as well for sure, many movies are based on books but I don’t know, movies just have that extra dimension because you’ve got that visual and sound and yeah that real kind of yeah I’m still going to keep saying 3D even though it’s flat.
I don’t know, I think Fast and Furious 67 was in 3D.
I was going to say now you can go and say a 3D film.
I don’t because I know that I would vomit after like two minutes.

Lindsay:

So you’ve never seen a 4D film?
I think I went once.

Cara:
There’s a 4D film?
Are we in Interstellar?
Like what?
4D?

Lindsay:
The seat has a little like bit of a rumble in it and moves about a bit.

Cara:

Oh yeah, God.

Lindsay:
If a character is riding a horse, you’re riding the horse too.
And there’s maybe like little air jets that kind of puff out.
If they go into a cave, they’re like cold air.

Cara:

Oh no, that’s far too much.
It’s quite intense.
You’ve done that?
How much do the tickets cost?

Lindsay:

I think I saw maybe the Hobbit or one of the Hobbit films that way and then I’ve seen a few like in theme parks where they’re like a little 10 minute film.
I think they’re like 5D because they maybe have like smells and water as well.
I don’t know.
I’m curious what counts as the dimension.

Cara:
Yeah, I was going to say I don’t know if scientifically that’s what that is.
I don’t think so.
Wow, there’s a whole world.

Yeah, we went to the cinema the other day, like actual bums on seat cinema and yeah, I just go to normal screenings.
I don’t go very much these days, but when I do it’s just like normal 2D The seats are comfy and there’s nobody’s blowing air up my bottom or wherever.
It’s old fashioned cinema.

Lindsay:
Can I ask what you saw?

Cara:
We saw the new Wes Anderson movie, which is called Asteroid City.
I was like trying to think it’s called like crater space.
I was thinking all these words like word association.

It’s Asteroid City because we’re big fans of Wes Anderson.
I actually think the last time we went the cinema was probably to see whatever the new Wes Anderson movie was.
So that’s an idea of how often I go to the cinema.
So he needs to keep making movies to keep me going out of the house and going to the cinema.

Lindsay:
Nice, nice.
That’s cool.
And what are some language trends to come back to our first bit of the discussion?

What are some language trends that you’ve noticed, first of all, with movies in particular?
And follow-up question, what are some language trends that you predict with movies?

Cara:
Oh gosh, well the positive trend is seeing like clubs emerging like Lauren’s language TV club and I know of other teachers doing movie clubs.
I even did a bit of teacher training to sort of help teachers because I want there to be more clubs like I genuinely do.
That’s not just so I can sell my course.
I think it’d be a really good thing.
A trend I see is denigrating movies and saying they don’t work.

But I would counter that with the way I think you can make them work.
But again, do they work?
Are they always suitable at every moment of your language learning journey?
Are they useful at the beginner level?
Probably not.
So I think that backlash is justified.
So yeah, I’ve seen a bit of movie clubs.

Have I seen a lot?
I don’t think I’ve seen too much nonsense, like just passively watch movies and you’ll There are YouTube channels like Learn English with TV series which is a massive channel now.
They do explicit teaching and they have their Learn English with friends course and everything.
There are a lot of people doing this.
You like watching this thing but here are the actual techniques and methods that work so you can learn from movies and TV shows.
So yeah, I think there is some quite realistic stuff that is fairly honest about the work involved, but given that we’re working with people who are motivated to watch this stuff anyway, then the work is kind of like the spoonful of sugar from Mary Poppins to help the work go down more easily.
If you hate movies, don’t watch them.

I don’t know if anyone is doing a podcast club, that would be awesome.
I would totally join that.
I pay for some podcasts that I listen to and I’m part of the Patreon community.
And yeah, it’d actually be even cooler to meet with people who listen the same podcasts as me and discuss them.
Not even for language learning, just because the topic is interesting.
But anyway, that would work really well in language learning.
So that’s the trends that I hope will develop.

These things that seem like solo activities like watching movies seems like the real kind of solo activity, but I think if it only remains a solo activity it’s not as rewarding or as useful as it is when it’s in a group.

Lindsay:
Amazing.
I’m excited.
I’m looking forward to all these clubs.

Cara:
Yeah, I hope they’re all going to pop up as people listen to this and think, yeah, I want a club for my thing.

Lindsay:
Yeah, that’s cool, that’s cool.
Cara, if people are interested in joining Movie Club, how do they do that?

Cara:

Well, they can join, I’m going to do, so movie club’s going to reopen for enrollment at the end of September and then in October we’ll be watching a scary movie because obviously it’s October but because this is my movie club, yeah you can expect like a smart scary movie with a lot of stuff to
discuss so not just like a load of gore.
So that will be coming up and then before that kind of mid-September, probably the week of the 11th of September, I’m going to do a small like week-long movie club with a back-to-school theme because it’s September.
So we’re not going to watch a whole movie but we’ll use clips.
So I mentioned that I use clips a lot in my club.
So, people will get a chance to taste what it’s like to discuss movies with others and use clips to do a deeper dive into the language.
What I recommend if people want to try it out, join me for the week long one.

If you like that, then you can join the actual club club, which is monthly.
You will still get a lot out of the week long one, almost as much as Hebrew in seven days.
I’m promising more than Hebrew in seven days.

Lindsay:
Quite the promise!

Cara:
No, it’s going to be a really fun, a fun week of, yeah, movie, watching and discussion and then the big one, well, for a week is good, imagine a month or even a year if you’re really, really motivated.

Lindsay:
Brilliant.
And how can people learn more about you in general?

Cara:

They can go to leo-listening.com, that’s my website, loads of stuff on there.
They can go to leo-listening on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel that I’ve been reviving a bit so people will find new videos on there all to do with.
Watching movies, reviews of movies we’ve watched in the club, all kinds of good stuff like that and then I quit all social media a few years ago but I kept my LinkedIn profile and I’ve actually been posting on there for the last year, 18 months, so that’s Cara Leopold.
If you’re on LinkedIn you can find me on there.
Brilliant, thank you very much and yeah, I’m excited.

Lindsay:
I want to end this recording so that I can ask you what the October movie is going to be because smart horror, that’s like a top-tier genre for me.
I thought it was amazing.

Cara:

We’ve also watched The Thing by John Carpenter.
I love all of John Carpenter’s horror movies.
It will be in the archives.
Even if we are not watching and discussing it together, people can go in and read about it and do the activities.
Yeah, still discuss it on the forum if they want to.
I have a thread for each movie.
I don’t expect a huge amount of discussion if it’s not that month’s movie, but at least they can still chime in about it if they enjoyed it.

Lindsay:

It’s like that archive is like an educational blockbuster video shop.

Cara:
Yeah, it is.
It’s like an old video shop.
I should try and talk about it that way.
The only thing that there isn’t is the actual movie because obviously I’m not on a streaming platform but we always managed to find the movie somehow.

Lindsay:
Thank you very much.

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