Abstract:

In the multicultural world university curricula demonstrate a great diversity of subjects for educating a versatile personality. Competitive academic environment makes those seeking to achieve the best academic record sacrifice their hobbies for their studies at times. Striving to achieve proficiency in a foreign language students more and more often opt for modern TV series as a means of boosting the skills in the languages they learn as well as a source of entertainment. Not only do the TV shows of today demonstrate intricate plots and intelligent dialogues, which abound with advanced+ vocabulary, but they also provide their viewers with substantial food for thought and numerous topics for discussion.

A practice of implementation of a course of English based on TV shows is described in the article as the first season of the course has been completed by the professors and students of Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University). The idea behind the “Serial English” course is a combination of some aspects of the English language learning in a classroom and a popular hobby of TV shows watching with the view to facilitating a foreign language acquisition and enhancing students’ speaking skills in a comfortable atmosphere. The classes are also designed to widen a range of social and cultural issues for students’ discussion. The class organization described is viewed upon as a platform for students’ interaction as well as an opportunity to enhance their argumentation abilities.

The extra-curricular course of English where the task is as appealing as watching several episodes of a favourite series and learning new vocabulary units with a focus on further open class and pair discussions appears to be a viable solution to the task of building up a solid vocabulary basis and developing participants’ speech in a language other than their native.

The paper provides an insight into the course organization, giving an outline of the topics such as Science as a field where the ends justify the means (based on “the OA” (Netflix)), Social networks: a blessing or a curse?; Modern technologies and their limits (if any) (based on “the Black Mirror”(Netflix)), etc.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the academic implications of the course, based on the results of the poll taken among the participants. The possible ways of the course development and the ideas of organizing a series of similar classes for other categories of participants are proposed by the author.

Keywords:

Language learning, speaking skills, vocabulary, motivation, language course.