Using Movies in Your FL Class

Hi everyone! Becky here. Below I have included some ideas for working with movies including pre-viewing, while watching and post-viewing activities.

Ideas for working with movies:

Tailor activities to use in your class in conjunction with specific moments in the curriculum. To focus on specific objectives (for example, listening comprehension and making suggestions) and content (such as cultural, communicative, grammatical and lexical).

Pre-viewing Ideas:

1: Start a conversation about the central topics of the movie. Have students observe relevant images or symbols and comment. Look at the map and discuss the geographic location, why the setting is important and what life might be like for people that live there. Look at the DVD cover and try to determine who the character is, where he or she might be, what kind of movie it is, what are typical characteristics of this movie genre, etc. According to your experience, what opinion do many North Americans have of this person? Are there people in your country that generate such a reaction?

2: Show the trailer. After seeing it the first time without sound, have students comment about what they have seen and try to predict what the movie will be about. Use questions like: What kind of mive do you think this is? Where does it take place? What socioeconomic background do the characters come from? What can you tell about the characters? Then, hand out phrases and fragments of the dialog from the trailer. After the second (and maybe even third) time without sound, have students put pieces of the dialog from the trailer in order according to the images. After students have put the dialog in order according to what they see, turn on the sound and watch the trailer one more time. Have students correct the order if necessary after viewing. (Suggestion: Create a word document, put the phrases in order, print two copies, keep one for you and cut the other one up and hand out the pieces in mixed order and have students arrange them as a class).

3: Present pictures and descriptions of movie characters and have students match descriptions with pictures after seeing the trailer. Have them revise their answers throughout the movie.

During the movie:

4: Always instruct students to take note of new or interesting vocabulary for post-viewing discussion. During the film, show English subtitles to help students match what they hear with what they read. For shorter movie clips in other classes, I find it helpful to play the clip without subtitles so that students must really try to understand what characters say in context through listening. While showing movies and movie clips on the computer, my students and I find it helpful to pause the movie to point out vocabulary preceding a scene or to listen to important or difficult short sections multiple times until students understand what they are hearing. I often stop the clip or full film at crucial or difficult moments to check for comprehension, to allow students time to complete sections of worksheets and to answer questions. Create a post-viewing activity in which students must recall the context of given colloquial expressions or provide the context and have students come up with their own definitions and employ the expression in a new context.

5: Have students perform several activities in order (according to the chapter of the DVD for organizational purposes).

Chp 1 - Expressions with a specific verb fill in the blank to complete the word and put synonym next to it so the student understands the meaning.

Chp 2 - What do the following phrases mean? Try to define them according to the context you hear them in.

Chp 3 – Listen and choose. Copy the entire dialog and focus on a lexical aspect to have students choose the correct form or word choice based on what they hear.

Chp 4 – Complete the table with the results of the meeting/conversation that took place in the movie.

Chp 5 – Listen and complete the dialog according to what you hear.

Chp 6 – Have the dialog prepared and ask students to indicate who said what by placing the characters’ initials next to each phrase.

Post-viewing discussion:

6. Answer comprehension questions orally. (If you had been there, what would you have done? Include expressions you are working with in class.) Match the colloquial expressions from the movie with the expressions on the right that mean the same thing. Classify the following words and expressions in four groups. Read words and interviews from the director and comment.

7. Choose a crucial moment in the movie and re-enact the scene allowing each person to vote for the decision they think is right. Relate the movie with a historical moment in the target culture when relevant (in the case of the movies I work with, the United States). Discuss art as a historical witness.

8. Hold an interview panel in which a talk show host (one of the students) interviews various characters from the historical moment and the movie (other students). In such an activity the talk show host directs the conversation between the director of the movie, characters from the movie, and other historically important people of the time so that each student practices the language orally and also must be familiar enough with each figure to be able to play his/her part.

Sample Lesson Plans:

Materials: Internet (at least to prepare the movie clips from Youtube; you can save them to your hard drive or your jump drive if your teaching location does not have internet at the following websites: http://vixy.net/, http://keepvid.com/ ), computer and projector OR DVD player and TV to play videos