1. Paris Nous Appartient, by Jacques
Rivette and Le Fabuleux Destin
d'Amélie Poulain, Jean- Pierre
Jeunet.

2. Step 1
Having admired French ‘cinémographie’ for a long time, I
decided to use this interest as a means to engage with
the learning process and thus improve my listening skills.
I looked towards two classic films I had not seen before in
order to test:
• My personal strengths and weaknesses by accessing
how much I could understand;
• Whether I could use them as a means to overcome
weaknesses and improve my listening skills.
These tests should help me to decide whether films are a
valuable tool to be used in the future in order to develop
listening skills and overall language development.

3. Step 2 : No Subtitles
My first step was to watch the film without subtitles. I found this challenging due to the
quick pace of the natural dialogue. The second image highlights another difficulty,
understanding French when the actor is in character, with his mouth full! However,
watching the film without subtitles forced me to concentrate and I noted words in
French I could hear but not understand. This helped my note taking skills whilst looking
them up later helped me expand my vocabulary. I found that using film in this way
made understanding idioms easier too, as I could see that the context meant I should
not translate the words word for word.

4. Step 3: English Subtitles
I then tried to overcome the ‘pace’ problem by using the subtitle option. I
found that this was helpful and improved my understanding of the film as I
could match what I heard with the English equivalent. It was interesting to
see how the transcribers used more natural translations compared to the
ones I found in the dictionary . However, as there was only an English
subtitle option I did not feel my listening skills were improving as much as
they could do as from time to time I found myself reading the English
rather than listening out for the French. So, I asked myself what I could do
and decided I should find a film which had French subtitles. This would
force me to engage with the language and help me with one of my serious
problems: spelling. This is an important skill for listening exercises as
misspelt words get 0 marks in exam situations.

5. Step 4: French Subtitles
As I hoped, I found the French subtitles extremely helpful as I was less inclined
to simply read the subtitles when they were in French. When I found certain
parts of the film difficult to understand the French subtitles were useful and
combatted the problem I had previously found concerning the quick pace of
native speakers. I was also able to engage with the spelling of words which has
helped me in class listening exercises. For example, at one point a character
mentions the word ‘chaos’. The French and English have the same spelling but
different pronunciation. This word came up in a listening exam, and as I had
focused on the word during the film I was able to recognise it. If I had not, I may
have been inclined to write ‘caros’ which reflects the word phonetically but
does not mean anything!

6. Step 5: Re-watching without subtitles
In order to assess how useful this method was I watched the film
again, without subtitles and found the majority of it easy to
understand. Using French subtitles evidently helped my listening skills
as they aided the expansion of my vocab and helped me recognise
words which did not ‘sound’ familiar but either shared ‘roots’ with my
existing knowledge or were words I could identify in texts but had not
heard in practice.

7. So, are films useful tools to tackle
language learning?
• Yes! - I found this exercise useful and feel confident that
next time I will recognise the vocabulary and, if I do it often
enough, will feel more confident listening to the natural
pace of native French conversations.
• My class work experience reflects that I am able to
recognise words I heard in the film.
• I will continue to watch French films for future language
development.
• HOWEVER: this process highlights that I need to use French
subtitles rather than English ones, and take notes of words
as it is clear I need to also expand my vocabulary. I will
therefore take sometime to do this and explore different
ways to increase my vocabulary.