Job Discussion Forums

[chryanvii]

I have been working on trying to find the best way to teach this movies class this semester. Each movie contains a whole lot of information, and I feel the need to teach them EVERYTHING in the movie, including the culture.

However, the class it too teacher-centered, and I am looking for help on how to make it more "engaging" as, well

Present Format:

Class 1 [2 hours]:

[1] I hand out a "booklet" of information which contains the main idea
of the movie, the names of the characters, and EVERY term and
expression that the students might not be familiar with. The left
side gives them the term - the right side gives them the meaning.
It is all in order of the movie, so they can follow it as the movie
goes along

[2] First Hour - I introduce the movie, the characters, some cultural
points, and go through all the words for the first hour of the class.
IT IS ALL LECTURE. This is all teacher-centered, and frankly
speaking, can be a little boring. Any laundry list of vocab becomes
quite boring. But it seems NECESSARY. However, there are so
many words to review in a movie, that I don't know how to cut it
down.

[3] Second Hour - I show the first part of the movie with English
subtitles.

Class 2 - REPEAT with new vocab/second part of movie

Class 3 - They will take the words and create their own role plays
using the words. Students will vote on which group they
liked the most.

I don't know - I'm thinking about scrapping most of the vocabulary all
together and just giving them a small list of the most basic terms from the
movie. However, many of the expressions they still will not understand in the movie. And it's hard to pull out the best ones.

Then the first class will be more of a discussion-based class using the "Jigsaw" style, where students switch between different discussions.


This movies class is quite a challenge, as the movies DO contain a lot of language. And students DO get quickly bored when they are not doing things and just listening to the teacher [except for those couple superstar students] - that is, unless he is a real comedian, which I'm not [unfortunately]!

Your help is greatly appreciated.

IDEA #2 - At the beginning of the semester, I just showed them an
episode of The Wonder Years. They loved it. The bonus is that
a half-hour episode only contains so much language. Maybe
I should just go back to teaching these?

[daCabbie]

I think you answered your own question:

[randyj]

See http://english-behind-the-scenes.com/site2/index.php

[Ariadne]

I NEVER thought I'd say this, but I bet China Movie Magic could offer some (good?) tips on this topic. Whatever happened to him?

To the OP... can you prepare your vocab lists beforehand and just give them to the students to study before the next class?

You mentioned English subtitles, but are you playing the movies with English soundtracks also? If you play them in Chinese the students really have no incentive to learn or care about your vocab lists. Make sure that every movie you show has EXCELLENT subtitles. Some of the subtitles I've seen have been useless.

Good luck. Let us know what you do and how it works out.

.

[Happy Everyday]

Something you can do is edit the movie for your lessons. Professional editng software is best, and you can pick up the basics of cuts and adding subtitles. Windows movie maker is crap. But it also allows you to split videos and add subtitles.

Buy the DVD you want to show. If necessary, use free software to convert the clip into AVI or MPEG 4. Drag the clip into movie maker. Voila! You can cut it into the scenes you want and add subtitles.

Adding subtitles should be in GOLD LETTERBOX. Some say white, but I firmly disagree. If the scene has a white, snowy background, you can't see the subtitles. Old films used white, but as the film quality degrades, it becomes harder to see it. I've watched hundreds if not thousands of films with subtitles. Gold is the best choice.

You can adjust text size in Movie Maker (MM). The text needs to be visible. The font should not be too thin because you want to be able to read it clealry. Also, this is important, you do not want fonts with little curly endings coming out of each letter. For some reason, it can result in being unclear when reading it onscreen.

Final Cut Pro and Adobe are better because you an add a "drop shadow" to the text. The shadow should always be black. MM doesn't have shadows for subtitles.

It can take you hours to transcribe a scene, type it in, fit it onto the clip, then render the file.

____________

If it's a film class, then you can go into most or all the film. Normally, you would discuss theory, then show some clips as examples. After each clip, you would explain (remind) them how the clip fits he example.

Sounds like your class is more about vocabulary with a few concepts. That also works! There are several ways to approach the use of film in a course.

You're doing a good job preparing them. I sometimes have pause points, then ask the class questions about what we viewed, then continue on with the clips. They hate it when you stop the film, so your preparation sounds excellent.

_____________
In the longrun, if you plan to teach for a long time, then consider this:

Create topics and themes for a lesson (one class). Use clipes from one or two movies as examples of the topic. One to three clips per movie with a total running time of 30 seconds to 3 minutes; just enough to give the example.

Introduce a few new words and maybe some words learned in previous lessons. Describe the topic (the concept). Play the clips that show examples of the concept (with your subtitles in them). After each clip, briefly explain how it was an example of the concept. You can ask a few questions to them if you want. Then show the next clip.

At the end of your clips and exlpainations, assign them some in class work that allows them to apply what they've learned about that topic.

This is clearly what you've been doing. If you put the hours into making your clips and designing the lessons, then the class will have more pacing of learning, watching, and doing.

Keep building these modules, and you'll have enough for several semesters. You can also edit out the sound and have student speak out the rest of the sentence. You can add your own voice into the clips. Endless possibilities.

[spiral78]

I agree with the idea of using 30-minute sitcom series as opposed to movies. It's far more easily chunk-able. Further, because you can then use as many as four episodes (or many more) from the same series, students have time to become familiar with the characters, contexts, and accents/pronunciation. Once they don't have to focus on a whole new storyline and characters, they have a lot more brainpower left to concentrate on language matters.

I've worked with Friends and a Canadian sitcom called Corner Gas (highly recommended - very neutral accents and sharply-drawn characters, and the humour is often obvious enough for non-native speakers to 'get it' on their own; nice ego boost).

The thing I'd change immediately from your description of the already existant movie lesson above is the 'presentation' part (it's clear you aren't really happy with that bit, either).

You could give the students the booklets in advance, and make small groups of them responsible for presenting different bits of it. Group A tells the class the main story line, Group B goes over the first bit of vocab, and so on. You'd probably need to give each group strict time limits (another useful skill for them).

Also, don't be afraid to use the same chunk of media over and over, working on different aspects each time. Again, once students' brains can be freed up from the basics, they can be much more free to focus on language.

You might try simply showing the movie once without any introduction, and then ask them to analyse and describe what they think is the main story line, and to note some words/phrases they heard and didn't understand. I would chunk this too - show them the opening first and let them both analyse it and predict what they think might happen in the rest of the movie.

I think you're simply trying to cover far too much material for the students to really grasp much. Think how you can break things into smaller chunks, and recycle the same materials, so that the students have a better chance to see whatever is really useful in it. Forest/trees!!

[Happy Everyday]

[quote="spiral78"]I think you're simply trying to cover far too much material for the students to really grasp much. Think how you can break things into smaller chunks, and recycle the same materials, so that the students have a better chance to see whatever is really useful in it. Forest/trees!![/quote]

ditto.

Also check out DVDs for teaching foreign languages to Native English Speakers. "In Action" is good. Sometimes it isn't clear and tries to get you to guess the meaning by hearing new words and watching.

"New Practical Chinese Reader" has videos that follow the dioalogues and storyline in the textbooks. Hearing, seeing, and repetition help a lot. The vids and lessons are all small chunks. But darned if it isn't hard learning the language!

[Laurence]

i suggest looking at this from a different angle

instead of trying to teach the whole movie, all the vocab and grammar and language in context

try to think of movies or parts of movies that you could make actual lessons from.


I developed a series of classes using the new (depp) charlie and the chocolate factory.

I can't remember exactly how i set it out..

There was a vocabulary lesson, where we looked at personality adjectives and comparisons between the five children (i isolated relevant introduction scenes, and examples of their interaction with others).

Then was did a class on predictions too - i showed the events leading up to the mishaps of each child (after reviewing personality adjectives) leaving students to guess what happened next, then reflect on their predictions after viewing the rest of the scene - it proved a good framework for using lots of different grammatical structures. Quite easy to make worksheets too, using screencaps etc.

We didn't actually watch the whole movie end to end, but i suppose we could have done so if I wanted to waste a couple of classes after milking all the exercises i could out of it..

[Teatime of Soul]

I'd suggest just trying to teach a single scene from a movie.

For example, The Breakfast Club has several terrific scenes where the dialogue, pace, and acting are perfect for teaching.

I'm sure there are countless similar movie scenes available. Just focus on one scene. You only need a few minutes to set it up and cue your students what to focus on.

Cheers.

[Happy Everyday]

Try these TV series:

Monty Python
The Young Ones
The Kids In The Hall
Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Superjail!
Robot Chicken

I'm just kidding. Friends is popular but can be very sexual.
Growing Pains, 24, and Prison Break are popular. They like relationship themes.

They usually don't like black and white, so The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents are out

Sight gags usually work better than verbal comedy. You can try both.
This clip is family friendly:
http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjYyNDE1OTIw.html

[dog backwards]

What level are you teaching and to whom are you teaching the course?

[mat chen]

China Movie Magic,
Was a very prolific contributor in the past and has an url here. I am sorry to mention names which is a taboo at Daves. He taught me much and I am very grateful to Dave for providing the contact.
It depends on what level of students you are working with. For instance you can use Charly Chaplan and Mr Bean movies with young and low level students. You have them repeat what is going on in the film. ie. "He is running." She is laughing." With older students you can do role plays based on what is going on in the film. You can have them predict what is going to happen ( future tense) and you can have them recall what has happened.

[nickpellatt]

I browsed this recently...not looked at it too closely mind, but it refers to using movies....

http://www.eslpartyland.com/teachers/nov/film.htm

I agree with using scenes, not whole movies. I think the above link shows some ideas for just using trailers!

I did once try a scene from American Beauty...I think I made a 90 minute lesson out of a 2 minute clip. I played it without sound, and the students had to 'read' body language and work in groups to guess the role of each character and their relationship to each other. I then had them atttempt to write a dialogue to match the clip (that didnt work well BTW), and on reflection I would have been better doing a gap fill of somekind...perhaps even featuring gaps as complete sentences for the students to guess at before listening to the audio.

TBH - If I show a full movie...I dont try and use it to teach anything....there is far too much content IMO. Showing a movie is often a combination of a lazy day for me, and a fun day for the students as a reward for hard work or something.

[7969]

[nickpellatt]

Guilty as charged. I know if I show a movie, I dont feel much of a 'teacher' that day. I only use them on the longer summer courses I teach, and only if things have gone well in terms of work completed.

I did once compile a worksheet, with questions, and follow up tasks to a movie....the whole thing didnt work that well TBH. My summer courses are 11 teaching days per group....and they work better with 10 days of work and one relaxed/watch a move day, than 9 days teaching and the movie and activities associated with it for 2 days.

edited to add -

I would love some solid lesson plans for the TV show LOST though! its so character driven, and so unpredictable, I have often thought about trying to write lesson plans for the show, starting from the first episode. I might try and put some together, but I find it so time consuming and it involves watching each episode so many times to get a single lesson plan. Lots of opportunities to use future predictions, to summarise using specific tenses, and character adjectives etc. I guess there are solid lessons there.....but I am kinda hoping someone else can plan them!