Using movies

[reviewer]

When teaching language, it's helpful to expose students to TV and movies. Even though they may not understand all of the words, it helps to reinforce pronunciation and sentence structure as well as providing different speakers of the language (rather than just yourself).

[gfell]

You need to carefully select the movies though. Using movies seems a good idea, but I do have hesitations mainly due to the speed of speaking by actors, slang and background noise. Showing movie segments also requires a lot of explanation.

I have never used movies in any of my classes. I remember once watching a Japanese movie in a Japanese class (when I was learning Japanese), and it was way too hard for most of us and as a result, the lesson was very frustrating and non-beneficial.

[reviewer]

That's true. Animated features may be better choices because the actors speak very clearly. We actually watched Disney films for that reason.

[exported_kiwi]

Yeah, movies are cool and I've used em when teaching college students here in good ol China.

I guess I could've chosen a few better ones to show but instead, I chose to modernise their vocab quickly and showed them the "Wedding Crashers". Needless to say, when a lil bit of nudity (top half and female only) came on screen, the girls were disgusted and the boys, well, they were happy as would be normal.

I then chose to show them a slightly less provocative one, can't remember the title now, but it evoked a few comments also, so I gave up. Movies are a useful tool alright, but we have ta remember that some of our students aren't exposed to what we're exposed to, on screen, at a young age and as a result, they're not immune to what they see. In China, the students, even when at college and 20+ years old, are still thinking of themselves as girls and boys because this is what their parents call them and it's kinda the way society is here....... try explaining that in our countries, you're no longer a boy/girl at age 18. They don't understand it and it's kinda hard to break them out of that mentality.

I gave up and got them doing other things because the one thing we don't need is any whiff of impropriety or indecency, even when it's only a movie shown to improve their English.

A few extra cents worth there!

[rwall7943]

Movies are great, but like everyone has expressed you really have to be carefull what you show. I find that more edicational and children's movies are better when teaching english. I even show some PBS kinda of shows and it really works.

[ShelleyV]

Movies are brilliant for immersion in the language but are not the best use of lesson time in my view.

Students can watch movies in their free time so a teacher can keep a library of movies that are lent out to students, or better, encourage the school to keep such a resource.

A teacher could show the start of a movie in class to whet the students' appetite and then let them watch the whole film in their own time.

Another idea is to show the first half to one group and the second half to another and let them discuss in pairs what happened and piece the whole thing together. But how do you stop them watching the whole thing...?

[gfell]

But how do you stop them watching the whole thing...?

Exactly. Especially if you have guys in your class and they want to watch the movie due to the action segments. But in action movies, usually there is more fighting than talking.

I find dramas the best. Movies with slow talking that have their own contained scenes. Sitcoms are also good such as Friends and Seinfeld. That way students can also appreciate the different humour avaialble in western society.

[ShelleyV]

Good idea for the sitcoms, if you can bear them that is!

How about older movies, they did not have the swearing and nudity.

Shelley
ESL games and activities for teaching English to children