Job Discussion Forums

[Super Mario]

There's nothing to "get", Outsida.
A movie such as "Bend it Like Beckham" provides many teaching opportunities , with issues relevant to Chinese kids. Why show them prime time pap, driven by spurious US middle class values?

[adamsmith]

Whether or not AV classes have any merit in the educational system ( I always thought they were classes for Jocks and liberal arts type people back home), the key point is that they do exist and teachers have to teach them
This poses the problem of what to use as materials that will benifit the students the most and that is our job as teachers. It does not matter as to what country the programs, be they movies or telivision, come from, but that they are in easily understood by the students. They should also have the potential to expose the students to different aspects of western culture while being entertaining enough for the students to pay attention and gain something from the probgram.
For this reason I think teachers should stick to shows with the main characters being around the same age as the students. Whether the teacher likes the show is not important - but whether the students can learn from the show. Use shows that have social issuesw that are common between coutnries. There have been many good high school/university age shows out there from different countries that the students can benefit from.
Do not focus on what you like - as you have many more experiences than the students will have had. Focus on what is best for the students and what works for the students even if it means a little more work for you in preparing your class.

[InTime]

BELOW are from pg. 1 of the Job-Related Thread: Promoting Change in China's English Classrooms.

Also fun is the SAY--DO/DO--SAY approach, in harmony with Total Physical Response w/Story. That is, a brief scene (action/not just talking)is shown, and the students describe the scene/action/emotions while the movie is on PAUSE. Then they later give the actions, in reponse to the teacher's words describing the scene/actor. Then, when they're ready, they do it in pairs. For more, consult the thread. I'll be making a long-overdue INDEX soon.

Good luck
===========================================

http://www.njcu.edu/cill/journal-index.html

Autonomous Learning through Cinema:One Learner 's Memories

The Creative Connection in Movies and TV: What '"Degrassi High" Teaches Teachers


Language Learning through Lies and Fantasies

Mental Holography:The Power of Imagery in Communication


Storytelling: A Way of Freeing the Imagination.

Teaching English Through Broadway Musicals

Available are a wide range of movie reviews for movies--promoting vocabulary development/critical thinking/active discussions
(available at www.imdb.com and www.metacritic.com)
*movie scripts (available at www.script-o-rama.com)

Over the years, L2 teachers have developed a wide range of communicative techniques based upon the creative use of movie segments, such as:

VIEWING COMPREHENSION (with sound off)
DIALOGUE BUILDING (with sound off)
AURAL ONLY PREDICTION (with sound only)
PREDICTIVE VIEWING--What will happen?
REVERSE PREDICTION--What happened before the sequence seen?
JIGSAW VIEWING (Only half the viewers see the sequence, and they relate it to those who haven't. Replay it to compare.)

Such approaches can create an enhanced learning environment, in harmony with Krashen's principles:
*A RICH VARIETY OF COMPREHENSIBLE INPUT
*A LOW-ANXIETY SITUATION
*REAL MESSAGES OF REAL INTEREST

[no_exit]

An AV class would include all media, TV included. TV is not limited to American sitcoms, and there are a variety of issues that can be explored by looking at the influences that TV has had on culture (many cultures, including your students' own. America isn't the only country with TV, or the only country producing crappy shows!) since its invention.

I was a Radio-TV-Film major (along with Asian studies) in university. Trust me, there's more to TV than Friends. Although my focus was film, which will always be my first passion, even I can't deny the place TV has in the modern world. To turn your back on it in an AV class would simply be snobbery. It is a teacher's job to present the material, not to dictate to the students what is worthwhile and what is not. You've got to take your own personal biases out of the equation.

I can think of a few ways where you might use TV creatively. I would show them different genres, and ask them what differences they can see between sitcoms and dramas. How is the writing different, the direction, the characters? You do not have to show them an entire series, or even an entire show. I'd stick to clips for the most part, clips which illustrate your points the best. You can also print out articles with statistics on TV, talk about how much time the average child spends in front of the television per day. Show them clips of more violent TV shows aimed at kids, and ask them to think about whether TV is a good influence on young children. Reality TV offers a whole different angle, and there are many ways you can go with it -- the obsession with fame, the lengths people will go to get it, whether or not reality TV is a legitimate avenue for aspiring performers ... gah, seriously there are so many things you can do with TV, so many creative and interesting lesson plans, why dismiss it simply because YOU don't like it?

I'll say it again -- TV takes a beating for being lowbrow, but the fact is that it has had a tremendous influence upon peoples lifestyles over the past 50 or so years. To completely ignore it would be irresponsible, and besides, you'd be missing out on a good opportunity to get your students engaged in the material. Poll your students on their hobbies and chances are a majority of them will list "watching TV" near the top. Chinese students, I hate to say it, are not sophisticated enough to appreciate film at the same level that an undergrad film class abroad would.

You have to go for universal themes that they can understand and relate to. My students loved Big Fish, O Brother Where Art Thou, and Monsoon Wedding, all really good films in their own right, but none on the same highbrow level as say Kubric or Citizen Kane. I wouldn't put Bend It Like Beckham up there either, and ough it is a good movie, don't think that it is any better than some of the really good shows out there, like Six Feet Under, or The Sopranos. But that isn't even the point, the point is that even things you might consider crap have a certain place in contemporary culture, and you can't deny your students the opportunity to look at all aspects of "AV." That doesn't mean you make the entire class nothing but Friends and The OC, it means you give each media equal exposure. Radio, TV, film, and I would even expand the topic and include the internet and gaming (if only for a brief unit), because it will get your students involved and interested.

[Outsida]

Very good points, no exit. I would disagree with showing them only clips, though. Think how annoyed you would be if you could only watch part of a show, and maybe just as you were getting into it, it was switched off! I've done this before and trust me, the students were less than happy - to the extent they refused to co-operate with the rest of the lesson. That was one experience I'd prefer to forget. Clips can work on a limited basis, but I'd suggest showing a lot of things in their entirety to make up for it - not as a sap to their wants, though. Continue generating activities from them. But also allow the students to get into the material.

BTW, my students thought Big Fish sucked! Still, different strokes and all that. We have to make allowances for the fact that they don't like sex, excessive violence, or character studies. They prefer a central character - preferably a hero. A new movie I'd like to try is Eight Below - seen it? The story of 8 huskies, abandoned by a scientific team in Antarctica, that had to survive alone for 6 months. It's good because there's not a huge amount of dialogue to overwhelm the students. Paul Walker really can't act, though. Apart from that, it was a good movie... I've never seen such gorgeous dogs!

Any other good ideas? What do you think of the following?

50 First Dates
Coach Carter
Leon: The Professional
Hotel Rwanda


Man, I knew a whole bunch of good films for students but can't remember them right now.

[no_exit]

[Mallaien]

This would be a hard class to teach, not only do you have to discuss the film content, but you need to discuss cultural diffrences.

I would avoid american Sitcoms as the humor is refrenced to american culture. It would be a time consuming effort. I dont know if you would need to be carefull about films with american social issues, if you had a choice on the film at all.

I have studied film history in college and I guess I have a bit of practice when it comes to discussing film.

[Outsida]

Yeah, they seem to have weird ideas about violence. On the one hand, their own films and TV shows feature people beating the daylights out of each other on a regular basis, men hitting women, mothers beating children, swords slicing people up, everybody kung-fu fighting... but they shake their heads and cluck their tongues in disapproval when a foreign movie shows a guy getting shot.

Apparently violence is only bad if it's not from Hong Kong!

[Tezcatlipoca]

There's a strongly felt difference between kung fu and shooting.

Jackie Chan initially never had anybody get shot in his movies because of the cultural perception.

I suppose the feeling is that no matter how badly beaten, a guy can still get up and walk away. But gettin' shot pretty much takes all the fun out of violence. We've all seen movies where guys take 50 punches to the face and just beat the living bejesus out of each other and still run off... It's a bit more difficult to do that with bullets flying instead of fists.

So I don't think it's an issue of violence at all, so much as an issue of death.

[vikdk]