Should We Use Movies, Videos and Films in the Foreign Language Classroom?

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000208 EndHTML:0000014563 StartFragment:0000004247 EndFragment:0000014527 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/lonniedaizovi/Dropbox/blog%20articles/Should%20We%20Use%20Movies.doc

Should We Use Movies, Videos and Films in the Foreign Language Classroom?

Using films and videos of all types are great audio input for the FL class

There are some teachers that are proud or even smug that they don’t show movies or videos in the classroom. There are others who show way too many movies or videos, and even worse - they have no front loading, worksheets, or follow up discussions or writing activities. They seem to use movies as time wasters or “babysitters’. To answer the  title question, yes, we should use movies, films and videos in the foreign language classroom.  However, there should be good reasons and some specific strategies when they are shown.

Why? - Why should we show movies and videos?

• Movies and videos are very entertaining both for there visual and auditory content.
• Both the teacher and the students enjoy that they are receiving language education in a calming and low energy manner.
• Some movies present cultural insights

• the constant and authentic (usually) auditory input
• It’s a great way to reinforce vocabulary, sentence structure, pronunciation, and grammar
• If the movie is familiar to the students (They may have seen it a number of times in English or their native language), they will not have to pay attention to the story line so they instead can listen to and learn how to say the familiar lines in the TL (target language)

Which Types of Videos Should You Show?

There are many authentic films available

Which ones?  Should they be cultural? Should they be related to the culture of the language being studied? Should they have a lesson or a moral? Can they be fun and light? Should they be only short ones or can they be full-length movies? Can they be in English (native language?) Yes to all.

• There are very good movies, new and old, that are in English but that teach culture in some way. El Cid, Man of the Mancha, Evita, travel videos for example can be shown in the first year classes. The follow up activities can be in the Target Language if need be.

Beloved, interesting movies in Spanish
offer good audio input but no culture

• Disney or Pixlar movies (of any culture) are great because they are enjoyable, they have priceless auditory input, and are usually familiar to students of all ages. "El Rey León", "La Bella y la Bestia", "Congelado", "Mulán", "Valiente"

• There are movies that are cultural, enjoyable and in the target language. For Spanish, these include “El libro de la vida", "El Norte", "El camino hacia El Dorado",  "Las locuras del emperador" ,"Diario de motocicleta"  and more. Many of these DVDs are available at Red Box, Net Flix, or companies like Applause, Carlex and Teacher’s Discovery. Be sure to view the movies, especially if they are rated R or NR. Most schools require parental permission to view such movies, if they give permission at all. Also, some parents will not allow even their teen-agers to view any non-G movie and  berate you for wanting to show such a movie. (Unfortunately, I have experience with that!)

Subtitles– I don’t usually show a movie unless I feel that the students at that level can understand it to some degree. If the movie shown is cultural and way above the level of the students, sure, by all means, use English sub-titles. Be forewarned, that often the  target language sub-titles do NOT match what is heard (in the TL). That may not bother the lower level students, but the upper levels are confused and their attention is misdirected. Occasionally if the language heard is either very hard vocabulary, heavily or regionally accented or full of dialect or slang, I will put on the English subtitles. If nothing else the students are receiving some TL.

Is There a Special or Suggested Way to Best Use Videos in the Foreign Language Classroom?

How – If the video you are showing is an educational video  (El Desfile de las Cholas en Bolivia, Landfill Harmonic in Paraguay) the optimal time has been proven to be 11 minutes. However if it is full movie, there are various ways  to take full advantage of movies’ language teaching attributes:

• There should be some preparation, or front loading for optimum viewing. You could write important, interesting or repetitive vocabulary from the movie. I prefer to write the words in the TL (as heard on the movie) and have the students look them up before the movie. It’s a good idea to check that the students have the correct meaning or nuance.

• You can have them listen for those words (or certain words) and give them a prize, smile, point or bragging rights when they point them out.

• Have sheet of simple questions, ideally sequential. You may want to warn the students when that question is coming up. You can also replay that section.

Cute G-rated yet cultural movies

• The questions at the lower level should be easy, present , present progressive, true/false, lists, maybe simple past. The higher levels can have questions in various tenses, including future (anticipatory questions), conditional (alternate endings or actions), subjunctive (era important que…)

• Sequencing activities, write words they hear for lower levels, group summary(written or oral) as a whole class or small groups, crossword puzzles using the vocabulary and/or characters, true/false, fill in the blank sentences or paragraphs, mini-research about subjects introduced by the movie, coloring pages of scenes, or characters if available.

• The upper level classes can write more advanced pieces or even essays. For example: After viewing "Mulan" can write a compare and contrast paper about Mulan compared to  Joan of Arc; Viewers of "Evita "can write an opinion piece about Evita - did she help or harm Argentina?; "Bajo la misma luna" can stimulate conversations or papers on immigration, mothers leaving their children for good reasons etc.

• Some movies are based on fact, or contain some fact. It’s good to discuss (or have the students think for themselves) what is fact, what is exaggeration, and what is total fantasy. The movies Pocahontas, The Road to El Dorado, and some others are good for that.

How often: The frequency with which you show movies depends on the level. I show only a few movies at the lower level (but quite a few short videos) . At the upper levels I show  more movies because they are able to understand more and therefore able to benefit more from the awesome auditory input.

In conclusion, don’t be afraid to show purposeful movies , but try to avoid the temptation to just pop it in with no prepping or post activities. Movies, videos and films can be great listening and cultural assets in the foreign language classroom.

To see some of Lonnie's many products in  many languages and many subjects, go to:

Lonnie Dai Zovi's Store on Teachers Pay Teachers