Foreign Language is one of the toughest subjects to learn at school, especially if you don't have any interest in that particular language. My grandparents came from Fujian, China. I was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia and although Indonesian is the primary language taught at school, my grandma refused to talk to me at home unless  I used her native language, Chinese-Hokkien. For a child mind, that was too much. As an adult, I'm forever grateful to her. Some of my cousins do not even understand the spoken language. Soon, my parents also want me to learn Chinese-Mandarin. Boy! That was tough. I hated sitting down in living room with my private tutor for three hours lesson on Sundays morning when I could run off and watch cartoons instead.  My parents gave up after couple months and said, "We hope you pick up the language when you are older." I did pick up the language later on and in a way more fun than sitting down for 3 hours on every weekend.

As early as I can remember, I was around five or six years old, my grandma started to rent Singapore drama series - each serial is an average 20 episodes. The dialog used was Chinese-Mandarin with English subtitle. Sometimes, I would sit down and watched with her, but since I didn't know the language back then, I couldn't care less. Nevertheless, the pictures and music did catch my attention and grandma would start teaching me a few simple phrases in Mandarin, such as, "Good Morning", "How are you?","My name is...." The easy baby languages if you will.

By the time I was in grade 4, the storyline started to draw my curiosity. By then, I understand some English that was taught at school, so the subtitle in the serial helped me to put two and two together in the storyline;albeit it's not perfect, but I got curious and wanted to know more. I started to watch them with grandma in full length and asked my endless questions.

When I finally understand 60% to 70% of a full Mandarin conversation, I was a freshman in high school. The drama series' renting never end since childhood, and I would spend hours - as long as my parents would allow me - squinting at the TV set and try to figure out just what in the world the actors/actress tried to say. Then it wasn't enough. My knowledge at that point of Mandarin was purely as a spoken language learn from TV. Beside my own Chinese name, I did not know a single one of the Chinese characters. Today's teenagers are into Hannah Montana or Justin Timberlake.Back then, I was idolizing some of the actors and actress, and I want to know their name and how to write them in Chinese.  That sort of kick started my curiosity of Chinese characters. My book shelf started to fill up with books like, "A Guide to Write Chinese", "How to Read Chinese", and English-Chinese dictionary.

As of today, I am - a first year graduate student - still learning the language, and I am still find my way to rent Singapore drama series. If you ask me, I might say that I am a little obsessive about them. But that's another story. My point is you don't necessary have to sit three hours in classroom or with a private tutor every week for who knows how long to pick up a foreign language. Albeit it is slower and take up more time, I believe it is more fun to learn through TV dramas and/or movies. I learn foreign languages this way, and I am proud to say that I know five different languages now: Indonesian, English, Chinese-Hokkien, Chinese-Mandarin, and Indonesian-Javanese.

Whatever the foreign language(s) that you want to learn, as long as you interested in the language, I believe TV drama series and/or movies is the place to start. You can learn just any foreign language(s). All you have to do is a pick a movie or drama in the language you want to learn, pull out your reference books, sit down, and watch. On one condition, you need to start by choosing a movie or drama that you are familiar with the storyline or at the very least has subtitle that you can understand. Otherwise, you are going to sit on couch and be very frustrated.