What You Can Really Learn From Drama



1. Food









In Ojakgyo Brothers they only start to eat after the Grandma said they could)

2. Housing







The home of Yamaguchi sensei in Gokusen is a traditional Japanese house)

3. Family







The typical evil rich mom, here Domyoji’s mom in Hana Yori Dango

4. Custom





5. History







Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero , based on the famous legend of an attempted murder of China’s first Emperor

6. The Language





I have watched so many Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean drama that I think I know the typical patterns and there aren't many new story-lines. Sometimes I just skip a few scenes (and some of you even skip whole episodes) because I know what will happen anyways. So why still watch? I always liked to discuss the stupid unrealistic things that happen in dramas and l love watching people making fun of it. But actually there is a lot I did learn from watching drama beside the fact that poor clumsy girls always get the rich handsome guys. Since I study Asian studies and ethnology the question is really interesting to me. I have been to Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan myself, though only for a short time, and want to share with you a few of my experiences about what I learned.In every drama you get to see people eat lots of stuff and you are suddenly craving things you don’t even know the smell or taste of. And they actually eat it! (Has anyone seen Gilmore Girls? They always sat in front of their big hamburger and never ate it. So frustrating. >_Faith and read about the period of Japanese occupation of Korea after watching Bridal Mask . Beside that, you can learn about history in other dramas too by the references they make to famous historical personalities or facts that are commonly known and shared by people living in the country. In the Chinese language they have a lot of idioms, which often have a long history and can only be understood if you know the story behind it. Some really good subbers even explain them in extra subtitles.And last but not least:Of course when we watch drama most of us need subtitles, because otherwise we would just be guessing about what is going on. I started learning my first words of Japanese with the anime Chobits (ittekimasu, itterassai, etc.). Now I watch Chinese drama without subtitles and can understand almost all of it. Of course you still need to study a language if you really want to learn it, but drama can be a great motivation for wanting to learn. You can start with some easy expressions that they frequently use, like ‘Hello’ ‘I’m hungry’ ‘I love you.' Then if you have reached a certain level of your studies you can really use it to practice your listening comprehension and get some more useful expressions used in daily life (expressing your feelings, buying stuff, food names), that you normally don’t learn in class. Good examples for this are the terms to address people like: sunbae, oppa, hyung etc. in Korean. If you commit yourself to learning an Asian language why not have fun with it at the same time?I could tell you even more details about the different aspects, but the article is long enough as it is. I hope to have shown that even without noticing, we can learn a lot from watching drama. You can learn things that you normally would only be able to understand if you lived in a country and had to ask people for explanations all the time. Like this, when you move to one of those countries, drama can help you get over the so called ‘cultural shock’ faster, because you will not be plunged into a world that's so different or foreign. You can already relate to some things and are familiar with some of the customs. A disadvantage can be that some of those things seem so natural already that you don’t even think it’s special and don’t feel the excitement of being in a foreign country. But knowing something can make you want to experience it and you might enjoy it more, like finally eating the food you always saw them eating in dramas, walking down a road where they filmed a scene you liked, or going to a Japanese festival seeing lots of pretty kimono.My main reason for watching drama is still to escape reality for a while. But some glimpses of reality can also be found in Dramaland. ;)