Movies in the English classroom

Nowadays students need to be exposed to a wide variety of resources from audio to printed material. Although this output seems to fulfil their needs and prepare them for the outside world, teachers always keep searching for more motivating sources. So, introducing movies into our classroom is a challenge most language teachers must face.

Daily, teachers encounter students' demands for watching real movie stories rather than those graded video ones found at the local bookstores, which in the long run turn out to be meaningless and artificial. So the need to adapt and grade famous film titles such as "Meet the Parents" or "AntZ" to fulfil their demands leads us into a new editor-like ground.

During the worksheet preparation, planning and editing to accompany these movies, a wide variety of techniques are resorted to involve and motivate students as well as help them profit from the video session.
Years of experienced teaching have proven that well developed, planned and graded video lessons should consist of different stages, which are:

• Tune in

• While watching

• After watching

• Firstly, by 'Tune in' it is meant that students are gradually guided and involved in the plot, the characters and the setting of the film. They can be led at this stage by prediction-based activities brainstorming speculation patterns with the aid of visual aids such as pictures, vocabulary banks with words and expressions from the story or just through questions related to the main topic.

• Secondly, at the 'While watching' stage, there is more thorough work on the plot and the characters. Students are exposed to a variety of activities such as problem solving, filling blanks, multiple matching, ordering events, true and false or comprehension questions. The main aim at this stage is to exploit the film at its best profiting from the wide variety of idiomatic expressions, collocations and slang that the students will encounter in real life.

• Thirdly, the 'After watching' stage is considered to be the follow-up one where the film plot is used together with the lexical terms by making students either role-play the best parts or by organising group debates based on the moral of the plot.

• Furthermore, a written homework assignment may be set asking students to describe their favourite character at lower levels or writing a film review as well as an article to be placed in the school magazine at higher ones.