This document discusses how films can be used to help teach English as a foreign language. It provides several benefits of using films, including that they are motivating, provide authentic language exposure, and help contextualize vocabulary. It then gives some tips for how to effectively use films in the classroom, such as choosing films that students can understand 70-90% of without subtitles, watching films multiple times, and starting with English subtitles. Finally, it provides some example activities for using films, such as jeopardy, story prompts, role playing scenes from films, and having students interview characters from films.

1. Using Film in the
EFL Classroom
Doina Morari,
Access Program
Assistant

2. How can film help you teach
English?
• Learning from films is motivating and enjoyable
• Film provides authentic and varied language
• Film gives a visual context
• Variety and flexibility
• Exposes the students to spoken language
• Useful in teaching vocabulary
• It contextualizes language through the flow of
images, making it more accessible
• Film also offers an enlargement of our knowledge
of the world and the cultures that it contains.
• http://www.britishcouncil.org/blog/how-can-film-help-you-teach-or-learn-eng

3. How to Use Films in Teaching?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ExwaPaHSdM

4. How to Use Films in Teaching?
1. Find something you like
2. Choose something you can understand 70-
90% of (without subtitles or other help)
3. Don’t use subtitles in your own language
4. Watch several times
5. Start with English subtitles, then watch again
without subtitles.
6. You don’t have to spend a lot of time- ten
minutes a day is better than nothing.

5. Activities

6. Jeopardy
https://jeopardylabs.com/play/ultimate-harry-potter-jeopardy
Create your own: https://jeopardylabs.com/

7. Story prompts
Make up cards with words from a movie that your students had to
watch. During the lesson, invite a student to come in front of the
classroom. His task is to come up with a story using the words from
the cards he extracts one by one. Another variant of this activity is
to make up a story together with all the students. One by one, the
students extract a card, and have to make up a sentence with the
word each has got. They also have to be attentive to the previous
sentences since they are supposed to create a coherent story.

8. Voice the Characters
Vision On/Sound Off (Silent Viewing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTQi-VvGZTA
Invite the students to watch an episode from a move without
sound. Their task is to voice the characters and to suggest what
the they are saying in that particular episode.

9. Characters
Margo Minion
Agnes
Edith
Gru

10. The Clothespin Game
This game is very good for checking how attentive the students were while
watching the movie. Invite a student in front of the classroom. Put some
clothespins on him. The class has to ask their colleague film-related questions. If
he answers one correctly, he has the right to take a clothespin off. If not, he will
give answers to more questions until he will give enough correct answers to get
rid of all the pins. The task of the whole class is to keep the person who is in front
of the classroom there as long as possible.

11. Role Play
• Great scenes
• Episodes that were not included in the
final script (the students come up with
those scenes)
• Favorite scenes
• Come up with other conflict solutions
• Imagine that the characters lived in a
different epoch. How would they react
to the situations they find themselves
then?
• Come up with another ending

12. Character Interview
• Students role play a press
conference in which reporters
interview characters from a film

13. Dear Film Friend
• The students write a letter to a
character in a film.

14. Famous Film Lines
• Students match famous lines of film dialogue with the
names of the actors who said them.
http://www.filmsite.org/topquotes.html