People develop not only comprehension skills in English by watching English movies (films) and other programmes on video, on TV or on the Internet, or by listening to BBC English, the Voice of America and other programmes and audio/video recordings for learning English.
People also listen to and learn different accents and peculiarities of English usage in real life settings in different English speaking countries by native English speakers in terms of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and style (formal and informal English). Informal English includes colloquial, slang and dialectal usage.
People can watch English feature films, news, documentary movies, educational programmes (travel, country study, etc.) and other programmes of one's interest (interviews, discussions, debates on many issues, sport, etc). It would be useful to watch programmes with diverse content to encompass a variety of important topics and issues of daily life.
In my view good feature films show scenes, events, situations, human relations and actions that ordinary people often experience in life. Good feature films reflect real life events (for example films with historical plot), have interesting and educational content and are morally and psychologically positive and edifying.
Good feature films meet spiritual and entertainment needs of people to a certain extent among other things.
Documentary movies, travel, news, country study and other educational programmes/videos are also informative.
It is a good idea to practise speaking and discussions of issues in English after watching English movies and other programmes.
It is helpful for learners and teachers of English to watch, to collect and to record movies (films) and other programmes with good useful content in English to develop better English skills.
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I understand what you wanted to say but problem is when we watch the English movie that sometimes
may not up to the standard English which might mislead anyone too! English is a changing language that
can be very much difficult for an even English educated person if he is not keen to cling to recent changes!
For example, I use The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary that is paper back edition just 5/6 years back!
Words like - Coach, Cook and Cheat -all are verbs and nouns. None have existence like -er with verb,
I mean coacher, cooker(human context), cheater, and so on. Just a few days ago I came across -Oxford
dictinaery has add "cheater" now-that makes me so appal now I feel guilty me as I attacted a Lawyer who mentioned a person to say- cheater- just twenty years ago as he didn't know that there was no
existence of that word! So how do you depend on that movie to learn better English? Of course, not
a lot of is changing but some that can make you embarrass sufficiently-that is the real concern!
I deem it my repsonsibility to share with my students the difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is done with the ears. Listening is done with the mind and the heart. At the professional level, powerful listeners inspire trust and confidence.
Becoming an effective listener is a long term process. It requires will power, discipline and a fierce ambition to succeed.
At the corporate level, I have seen lot of managers only hearing out subordinates and thereby losing intellectual capital.
I will not get into the barriers of listening but suffice to say that people who master this skill stand at a huge advantage.
Coming to students, I make it a point to tell them to watch channels depending on their area of intertest, as in, BBC News, National Geographic, Animal Planet or Sports Channels.
I ask them to focus on the speech. Apart from this, I also play recordings pertaining to diverse areas to which students have to listen to and answer questions at the same time. This exercise gives us a fairly accurate picture of where the student stands with respect to listening skills.