See / Look / Watch

Many students get confused about differences between these words.

Have you considered how they are different?

• When we SEE something, we are passively receiving visual information. You are not really trying to pay attention to it.
  e.g. I see a big building over there. (there is a big building)

• When we LOOK at something, it is more active. We are moving our eyes to something and paying attention to this thing. We are collecting visual information.
  e.g. Look at that big building, I think it’s a cinema! (pay attention to that building, I think it’s a cinema)

• When we WATCH something, it is because the thing is moving and changing. We are actively collecting visual information over time.
  e.g. Let’s watch a movie at that cinema. (the movie takes time, we need to continue to watch it so that we can understand the story)

When we SEE or LOOK at something, we often think about how we collect complete information.

Look to your left. You can quickly identify and understand many things next to you.

But with a movie, a baseball game, a child playing in a park….we cannot get ‘complete’ information in a short time.
We need to continue to pay attention to them to see the changes and results.

These three words are similar, but slightly different in their meaning.
Often multiple words can be used:
I want to see a movie / I want to watch a movie
I saw a movie yesterday / I watched a movie yesterday