Pop culture as learning tool

West Kildonan

It was an assumption I had made before as an English language teacher.

Recently, while teaching newcomers at an adult education centre here in Winnipeg, one of my students stood out in her ability to communicate verbally. She was originally from Ethiopia, younger than her classmates, and spoke a lot like Canadians her age. I thought that she had completed some years of schooling here in Manitoba, perhaps her studies had been interrupted, and she was now looking at completing her high school credits.

When I asked where she went to school before, I discovered she had not. In fact, she had only been in Canada for a short time, arriving just four months earlier. I was surprised, but then, not really.

She had gone to a high school in her home county, but not one where instruction was entirely in English. She had taken some courses, but that did not explain her higher level of proficiency. I asked her if she watched a lot of English movies, videos and listened to English music. She replied that she had. She has an older sister, now living in the United States, who was a big fan of movies and watched them often. Little sisters, as is often the case, do what big sisters do.

I’d first noticed this when I taught at a women’s university in Japan in the first decade of the 2000s. I was approached by a woman on the subway one day who started a conversation with me. I assumed from the naturalness of our back-and-forth that she had spent some time studying in an English-speaking country. She told me she had learned from Friends –not a network of expats living in Tokyo, as I had thought, but Ross, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Joey and Rachel from the TV show, which she watched devotedly. I’ve since realized that many of my students who had higher communicative levels were also dedicated watchers and listeners of movies, music and videos.

One of the best examples was a young woman from Afghanistan, who had come to Winnipeg as a sponsored refugee student, taking classes at a local post-secondary college. From the moment we met her at the airport, her ability to communicate in English was noticeable – and much better than that of previous participants in the program.

Intrigued again, I asked her where she had learned English. She said she hadn’t taken any formal language classes but had decided to only communicate on social media in English. Her grammar and writing needed work, but her ability to communicate with staff and students connected her and she was able to persevere when things got more difficult. She graduated with a two-year diploma in early childhood education in 2025 and is now happily working in Winnipeg.

Listening is an often under-emphasized part of language education. I have seen the positive results in people who have decided to prioritize it. It can make a huge difference in how successful some newcomers are.