Mr. Bean and Arnold Schwarzenegger Are Being Used to Teach English as an Additional Language

Attempting to pick up a new language is almost always a daunting task, but luckily, some students learning English in the U.K. have found help in the form of that borderline psychotic man-child who once got his head trapped in a raw turkey orifice, and opted to use a handgun in lieu of a light switch: Mr. Bean. 

Yes, as recently reported in The Guardian, an ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) class at Keighley College in West Yorkshire has been screening movies and TV shows during lessons, including episodes of the beloved British comedy Mr. Bean — not because the teachers are goofing off, but because this can be a valuable resource for communicating language and culture. 

Mr. Bean may seem like an odd choice for an English class, considering that the titular character is famous for being primarily mute. And, though he does occasionally speak, schools probably shouldn’t be teaching people to mimic Mr. Bean’s distinctly bizarre speech patterns. 

Instead, the show is used to entertain students, and teachers follow up episodes with a group discussion in which students are asked to use English words to “describe the wacky scenarios in which Mr. Bean finds himself.” For example, after the episode in which Mr. Bean visits the dentist, the teacher wrote the word “reclining” on the classroom’s white board, in reference to the chair. 

And just think of all the verbs that could be learned from the scene in which Mr. Bean spills water on his crotch and seemingly gets to third base with a bathroom hand dryer. 

This sounds like a fun way to engage with students, but Mr. Bean isn’t the only pop-culture icon being utilized by this school. Reportedly, one of the other titles that gets regularly shown in classrooms is Twins, the 1988 Ivan Reitman comedy starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito. 

Again, Schwarzengger might appear to be an unusual choice for an English class, considering that he has a thick, iconic, frequently hard-to-decipher Austrian accent. But again, the point of these lessons is to have a discussion afterwards. And Twins is a great way to learn phrases like, “Wait, is this movie seriously about eugenics?”

This practice isn’t limited to this one school either, pop culture is frequently employed when teaching English. Iconic comedies, such as The Simpsons, can also be used to teach English, especially if students want to add words like “embiggens” and “cromulent" to their vocabulary (to be fair, those are real words now).

While experts have backed up this approach, calling movies and TV shows a “rich source of input” for people learning English, hopefully no students pick up any of Mr. Bean’s scholarly bad habits.

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