Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Adventurer]

What's your take on using movies in the EFL classroom?
I am generally against it. I see it as excessively wasting the time of the students. I would only use a movie if I first prepped them by introducing certain vocabulary words, did some assessment prior to showing the movie, explained some things they'd see in the movie etc....

I remember being told when I went to teacher's college that it wasn't good to use films in class. I think if you're going to show a movie, it's better to show certain clips and explain certain things before they see the movie. I once showed a movie when I taught French because my director asked us to do that, and I tried to make it as educational as possible, but I didn't think it was very useful for 101 students. They did learn some things because I prepped them before hand. However, they were only in French 101, so there's only so much they could get from it. The following year, we weren't required to show a movie.

[yfb]

If it's the end of the semester, the students are antsy and won't listen to anything you have to say anyways. Might as well play the movie with some attempt to tie it to English teaching.

[LAtoSeoul]

Depends how you use it. If you just play the movie until the bell rings, then that's bad.

If you are going to play a movie, I would puase every scene. Have them explain what is going on in each scene. The plot, feelings, why they did this and that. Have them explain the scene in English.

[YTMND]

I have tried different approaches.

1) Multiple choice and essay questions. This is good for higher level students.

2) Questions for certain parts of the movie. This is good for showing a 1.5 hour movie in 40 minutes. You ask questions and then play 10-20 minutes of the movie. The downside is that students don't like this give and take style of presenting material. When they are going to see a movie, they want you to press play and not stop or pause it.

3) To deal with this, I take screenshots of the movie instead. You can also get movies with subtitles in the students' language. Often times, you can get it so there is both their language and English. Talk about what is happening in the movie and ask questions based on each screenshot. After that, I play 15-30 minutes of the movie. Students don't seem to mind this because they can see a continuation and progress in the movie. I was teaching American history, and I used 2 movies in one class this way. You can also add pictures into your lesson/presentation and it doesn't negatively affect things.

4) Another thing I do is give students a worksheet to fill out while they watch. They have to write out all the character names as they hear them and nicknames those characters are called in the movie by their friends or family. They have to find a funny or sad part of the movie and write out a few words they they don't know. If they can, have them write out any expressions they hear. This could be a repeated phrase a character uses. If they have time, they talk about one of the characters.

5) With the Mr. Bean videos, I outline what happens and get keywords that represent whatever actions happen in the video. Then, after playing we go over them. Students try to make sentences. This is good for intermediate level students. The higher level students get bored and the lower level ones are confused.

[Adventurer]

Would you generally avoid showing it to beginner level students?
I haven't shown my students movies. I was thinking of showing one that had cultural relevance, but I changed my mind. I questioned the educational value of showing a whole movie to beginners. I can understand it can be entertaining, and I might do it if the students requested it, and it was at the end of the term. How much would beginner students get from pausing the movie when their comprehension is limited? I thought about showing a bunch of kids a movie. I, then, changed my kind because I thought it would be wrong.

[edwardcatflap]

Movies are just a resource like any other. You probably wouldn't do a reading or a listening activity that lasted a whole lesson so why show a movie for the same time? There are loads of ways you can use this kind of resource. Some of them could be adapted for beginners. They probably wouldn't get much from the actual dialogue in the movie, though you could use the actions and what they thought the actors were saying to generate language.

[Adventurer]

[cj1976]

I only show movies at the end of the semester or in camp as a special treat. After the movie, I hand out some quiz questions about the movie and give prizes to the winner. There's nothing wrong with letting the kids unwind after months of stress.

[iggyb]

I've used video a lot before and like it, but you have to do more than just press play.

I use it like you would a reading text. I start and stop the clip frequently. I ask a lot of questions - varying what is asked by level of the class. Comprehension questions - vocabulary questions - and whatnot.

Because of how frequently we stop to talk about it, it is much better to use TV shows and ones that run for 30 minutes. We never watch the whole show. I'll use my computer to cut it down to a few short scenes I think the class will be able to describe or that will provide useful vocabulary.

The basic idea is: Video gives everyone in the class the same basic foundation. They all see the same thing. They all have that visual comprehension.

If I tailor the questions to the class level well, and I use the white board to write key words, phrases, sentence patterns, and whatnot.....Then the students learn useful things in a way that is more real-world than what they get in textbooks or a written text.

For beginning level, I might stick to vocabular: What is that? What color is that? What is he doing?

I like focusing on verbs with beginning level, and visual material provides a good opportunity to connect the word with its meaning.

With intermediate and higher level classes, I'll ask more comprehension questions starting with things like, "Is he a good boy/guy?" "Why is she angry?" "Why are they laughing?" With the highest level classes, I'll ask them to translate very short segments or I'll play longer clips and have them explain it to me like I couldn't understand a word.

With classes where all the students speak the same language, I've used TV shows in their language and had them tell me what was going on.

That has usually been very sucessful, because they like teaching the teacher. Since they understand the clip 100%, they also have more to work from in terms of trying to find something useful to say about it in English.

It helps if you can watch the show with English subtitles ahead of time or have someone explain it to you. If you know the show well, but pretend you don't, you can help the class out when they start getting stuck in their explanation of what you are seeing.

The way I did it at first was to have my advanced level Korean adult classes go over it with me. At the end of using it with them, I'd know much about the clips. Then I'd use it with the lower levels.

Now that I think about it, I might do this with 4th-6th grade for graduation week.

When I've done this before in the hakwons, there was resistence from the Korean staff because the show is in Korean, but once they saw how I used it, they came around.

I'm leaving Korea at the end of these last 2 1/2 weeks of non-class classes, so I'll put up with resistence from my CTs if they offer it...

[YTMND]