Hello again, I want to have some educational movies for EFL learners in our centre. I've found many but the used language is little bit hard to capture by my students. So, I need to find some using easy language.
I'll appreciate what you'll be doing.
Short English Movies?
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Most DVD's have a feature called Subtitles that shows what the characters are saying on the screen at the bottom.
You can also get full scripts of the movies on the Internet. Have forgotten the address right now but you can Google scripts and the title of the movie. I just used the core of the movie but had the whole script available for the keen students.
There are summaries everywhere but I usually found Rotten Tomato had the best ones.
I always chose a movie that most of the students had seen in their own language first because they knew the plot and roughly what the characters were saying.
Then I tried to get them to put it into one of Bernie Mohan's frames of Description, Classification, Sequence, Principles, Choice, and Values. I translated those words into their language and gave them an outline sheet for each movie or story we read or they told. Description leads to Classification, Sequence of the story to the Principles and Choices the characters made to Evaluation.
Most students describe the story and characters, give you the sequence and tell you what choices their characters made but never go to the other level and that is where the good marks are on English tests.
Then we read a story in their textbook that had the same theme as the movie. Amazing how the vocabulary was the same.
Finally they wrote a story that they knew or had occurred in their lives with a similar theme and I corrected those, typed them out without author's listed and gave them to all the students in the class.
English stories often have a very different focus than the stories in their own language and culture and this is a great time to discuss that and how they will have to have an English focus in exams at least and often in conversations to be understood.
You can also get full scripts of the movies on the Internet. Have forgotten the address right now but you can Google scripts and the title of the movie. I just used the core of the movie but had the whole script available for the keen students.
There are summaries everywhere but I usually found Rotten Tomato had the best ones.
I always chose a movie that most of the students had seen in their own language first because they knew the plot and roughly what the characters were saying.
Then I tried to get them to put it into one of Bernie Mohan's frames of Description, Classification, Sequence, Principles, Choice, and Values. I translated those words into their language and gave them an outline sheet for each movie or story we read or they told. Description leads to Classification, Sequence of the story to the Principles and Choices the characters made to Evaluation.
Most students describe the story and characters, give you the sequence and tell you what choices their characters made but never go to the other level and that is where the good marks are on English tests.
Then we read a story in their textbook that had the same theme as the movie. Amazing how the vocabulary was the same.
Finally they wrote a story that they knew or had occurred in their lives with a similar theme and I corrected those, typed them out without author's listed and gave them to all the students in the class.
English stories often have a very different focus than the stories in their own language and culture and this is a great time to discuss that and how they will have to have an English focus in exams at least and often in conversations to be understood.
I think you should focus your energy on finding content that is of interest to your students. Motivation is key here. Regardless of their level, your students will get a lot out of any movie as long as the content of the movie is of relevance to them. With absolute beginners, find movies that are full of action and body language, or even old silent movies like Charlie Chaplin.
R
www.esoltechnology.com
R
www.esoltechnology.com