English Study: How to use the Big Hit Drama ‘Friends’ for Language Learning

“Friends,” is a drama series that began in 1994 and ran for 10 years in the United States. The story of six men and women in New York, filled with laughter and tears, became a huge hit around the world. Incidentally, the final episode (Season 10, Episode 236) in 2004 was watched by 52.5 million viewers! This legendary drama series that has excited the world has become a hot topic of conversation in Japan, and in fact, “Friends” has been attracting attention for many years as perfect content for studying English.

In this article, we will explain how you can use “Friends” for English study. If you want to improve your English while enjoying the drama, please read to the end.

What is “Friends” all about?

Friends is a story about six main characters. According to the director and screenwriter, they focused on creating a story that focuses on each of the six young people living in New York instead of focusing on a single main character. The genre is a sitcom, a situation comedy, in which six unique individuals are comically portrayed in situations centered on friendship, love, and work.

コメディ要素だけではなく、時に6人の思いが交差しながら描かれる切ないシーンも多く、フレンズを一言で語るならば「笑いながら感動出来るドラマ」と言えます。

In addition to the comedic elements, there are also many sad scenes depicted as the emotions of the six people sometimes cross paths. If Friends were to be described in one word, it would be “a drama that can move you while you laugh”.

Why Choose “Friends” for English Study

There are many reasons why Friends is suitable for English study.

• Each episode is short (22 minutes) and easy to tackle.
• The drama itself is interesting, so you can learn by watching it over and over again.
• There are few technical terms and no difficult English is used, so even beginners can learn a lot.
• You can learn natural English, not textbook English.
• Many phrases can be used in daily life because the story is centered on daily life.

It takes about 2 hours to watch a movie, but each episode of Friends is only about 22 minutes long, which is just the right length for English materials. The drama itself is also very interesting, so not only can you study without getting bored, but you can watch it over and over again and enjoy it each time, making it ideal for repetitive learning.

The English used in the drama is relatively simple and includes many phrases that can be used in daily life. In this way, Friends is a very attractive drama as English learning material.

An effective way to learn English using “Friends”

From here, we will explain in detail how you can actually use Friends to improve your English language skills most effectively in details.

1.Watch Season 1 at your own level

Study Progress
20%

First, watch Season 1 (24 episodes) to get a feel for how interesting it is. Learning English can be difficult at times, but the most ideal way to learn is to have fun while doing so. Therefore, at first, try to watch Season 1 with the goal of enjoying the story itself without much preparation.

The important thing at that time is to make sure that you can understand the story. It is more efficient to study videos for purposes other than checking your level if you have a good understanding of the content, so beginners and intermediate users should make sure to display Japanese subtitles.

※Click here for those who want to use videos to check English-level
大人のオススメ英語勉強法アイデア　～第３弾：映画・動画活用 編～

2. Watch episode 1 again with subtitles only

Study Progress
30%

After watching Season 1 in its entirety, go back to Episode 1 and watch it again with English subtitles instead of Japanese. You should already know the content of the story, so make sure that you can keep up with the speed of the English, what parts you cannot hear, and what parts you cannot understand even if you can hear them.

3. Find and solve problems

Study Progress
40%

Find out what you did not understand and solve the problems. This is the most important point, so do it properly. Make sure to write down the parts of the assignment and clear them one by one. Start by picking up proper nouns and verbs that you did not know, and make sure that there are no English words that you do not know.

Then after that, check tenses, grammar, slang, etc. At this stage, do not expect perfection when it comes to listening. The reason is that listening skills do not improve dramatically in a day. Beginners in particular tend to seek immediate learning results, so don’t be discouraged if you don’t get it, but keep working on it.

4. Advance to the full story without aiming for perfection

Study Progress
70%

最後の手順はシンプルです。既にお伝えしたやり方を一話一話それぞれで行います。どれも完璧を求めずに70%くらいを目指してどんどんストーリーを進めていきましょう。この方法で最後の236話まで辿り着いたら、また第1話に戻って復習をします。

The final step is simple. Follow each episode with the way we have already told you how. Do not aim for perfection in any of them, but aim for about 70% and keep going through the stories. When you reach the last 236 stories in this way, go back to the first story and review it again.

5. Review

Study Progress
99%

After you have watched all of the stories in the same way so far, you will do a review. To review, go back to the first episode and do the same thing again. By doing this process over and over again, you will naturally improve your English. The ultimate goal is to be able to understand almost 100% of the material without English subtitles.

Things to keep in mind

This method of learning English with Friends will take some time to complete, so we recommend that you enjoy it while you have some free time and that you work through it carefully, little by little, rather than as your main English study. Also, be careful not to get so caught up in the story that you end up “just watching foreign dramas”.

It has a completely different effect watching it as study material rather than just watching dramas. There is no problem in enjoying Friends, but be careful not to forget to learn from it as well.

Where to watch Friends Online

In Japan, “Friends” is available on Hulu and U-NEXT. Both of these sites charge a flat monthly fee and offer unlimited access of not only “Friends” but also many other contents. There is a free trial period, so you can start by trying out Friends to see what kind of drama it is.

※Hulu Official Site
※U-NEXT Official Site

Final Words

In this article, we have explained how to use “Friends” for English study. If you want to learn English while having fun at the same time, “Friends” is the perfect English learning material for you, so please give it a try. If you would like to learn English by reading news instead, you can read our blog : 6 Websites with Japanese News in English : Great for Reading Skills.