On English Movie and College English Teaching

On English Movie and College English Teaching Abstract: English movies have gain its popularity in college English teaching. With more and more advantages recognized, the disadvantages and problems are also being noticed gradually. Discovering the problems and disadvantages is of great importance in advocating it in college English teaching, for thus can we develop it and advocate it in college English teaching and to help students improve their English comprehension.Key words: English Movies; College English Teaching; disadvantages; suggestions.I. IntroductionWith the rapid development of international cooperation and communication in the 21st century, especially after China’s entry to WTO, together with the policies of reform and opening-up, English has become more and more significant as a global language. More and more attention was paid on English teaching, especially in college. English is the subject that all college students should learn in China, no matter what major they are. With the help of various practical and updated resources for teaching and learning, teachers have been looking for a variety of means and methods to the development of students' English ability.Many educators in China begin to realize the functions of English movie in English class, and the importance of the effectiveness of this means and method to be taken into practice, which can stimulate the students’ motivation to gain their attention and interest during the process of watching and learning. Besides, students will benefit a lot from watching movies, like memorizing language points with less time and acquiring the linguistic knowledge and cultural background in a more relaxed way.This paper consists of six parts. Part one is the introduction to this paper. Part two is the brief presentation of English movies and the current situation of English movies in college English teaching. Part three is about the advantages of English movie in College English teaching. Part four principally emphasizes the disadvantages and problems of English movies in college English teaching, such as the time-resuming of movies in classes, the difficulty of teachers to prepare well, and the casual attitude of teachers and students. Part five is the main body of the thesis, that is, the solutions to the problems that exist in English movies in college English teaching. Part six is the conclusion, which summarizes the research, and highlights the essential points of it.II. Brief presentation of English movies and the current situation of English movies in college English teachingThe present English education in China has its disadvantages, and the general English proficiency needs improving. Nevertheless, English education in China has undergone substantial changes in recent years. Various medias, such as films, music, and internet are used to help students learn English in a more convenient way. English film is an important and typical example."A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a story conveyed with moving images. Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them."① Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating — or indoctrinating — citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue into the language of the viewer. Due to those characters of film, both students and teachers like it very much. What's more, as the development of media technology, it's very convenient to apply a film in the college classroom for English teaching.The chart of Movie Review's English teaching situation and tackles shows that at one aspect it's true that most college students in China have the experience of watching a movie in class. But the way they have is almost the same, merely playing and watching. And most students said they like watching a film in English class, and think that it is helpful to their English. Nevertheless, there is also some students hold the opinion that English film has little help in improving their English comprehensive ability. At another aspect, due to the restriction of course quantity, and film's long time lasting, the English film course is still of quite small proportion in the college English courses.① Whatton.W.Victor: The uses of film in the teaching of English [M]. Ontario Institute for studies of Education, 1971 0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%成绩优异成绩良好成绩一般成绩较差较喜欢很喜欢一般III. The advantages of English movie in college English teaching It's believed that English films have numerous advantages in the role of college English teaching.1. Help to improve student's English spoken and listening ability and enlarge their vocabularyEnglish movies provide a good learning environment for college English learners. Images and text and sound stimulate the brain through the multimedia devices simultaneously, make learners keep firmer and long lasting aural and vision trace in mind. Like watching the Legally Blonde and Bridget Jones’ Diary, through paying attention to the heroines' pronunciation in the two films, students could feel the difference between American pronunciation and English pronunciation. Listening and speaking are two important ways to learn a language, they are also the most natural and efficient ways. By repeatedly listening and speaking, students can accumulate vocabulary, grasp the commonly used oral English sentence patterns, and can imperceptibly train students' language sense, and sense different stress, rhythm, pitch, pause, speed which carries enormous amount of information.2. I mprove student’s cross-culture communicative competenceTo correctly understand and use a language, one must learn both the language and culture combine with language teaching and cultural introducing together. Cultural differences will largely reflected in a film, like The Blind Side, Big Fish all are films with distinctive culture connotation. English movies like that can help students have a better understand of western culture, the daily life of the westerners and thinking mode etc, much practical English knowledge. "Only when one understands western culture and experience the culture in the position of the role can him thinking in western mode and master the knowledge of cross-culture communication."①Lay a good foundation for communicating with foreigners frequently in the future.3. Brisk the class atmosphere to improve student's study efficiency.①Andrew Goodwyn: English Teaching and Media Education [M]. Philadellphia: Open University Press, 1992:56Einstein said interest is the best teacher. Thus interest is very important in learning. Once study-interest formed, students will have a strong thirst for knowledge, become very active in study. The film as a comprehensive art, through the mold concrete and vivid visual image, the audience could enjoy a series of moving pictures to complete the aesthetic process, through the expressive characters' actions to reflect all facets of life, and through the personalized original sound track to reveal character's psychological activity and display characters' personalities. Specifically, through the Waterloo Bridge, students can understand young people's view towards love in that background and situation. That is what they are interested in. When seeing some resonant plot or hearing some beautiful lines of dialogue, students would like to express their feelings and thoughts with one accord through imitation, group discussion, and other ways to communicate with each other, thus the classroom atmosphere become active.What's more, it could let students acquaint themselves with American and British culture, broaden their knowledge. For example the Ten Commandments can help us understand western religious culture, Glory and Gone with the Wind brought us to the American civil war, from Nixon and Thirteen Days we can learned America's political life during the cold war.IV. The disadvantages and problems of English movies in college English teachingAs it is known to all that everything has two sides, despite so many advantages, it still has following disadvantages and problems.A. The shortcomings of English film in college English teachingFirst, the preparation of an English film class would consume teachers a lot of time. At one hand, due to the lack of an available textbook on English film teaching, teachers have to consider and select a suitable film. At another aspect, since English film is an art that used to amuse the English speaking people, and the film itself contains its country's history and culture, all these result in teachers have to watch one film or even more over and over again to search for some related useful information. Obviously those two aspects would take quite a lotof time for teachers to prepare a lesson.Second, it's difficult to devise the match exercises. "Playing an English film is not for entertainment but act as a tool of learning English, thus students need some related exercises to consolidate what they have learnt in the film."①That is, teachers have to look for materials and then contrive a mount of suitable exercises all by their own. Thus teacher's burden is much heavier.Third, the effect of playing an English movie in English class doesn't achieve the desired outcome. Students may rely on the subtitle translation too deeply that can't achieve the purpose of practicing their listening comprehension; and what's more, students may be too relaxed to forget the purpose and aim of watching the film in class, thus the effect is not so good. Furthermore, even if some students know and remember the aim and purpose, their attention is very likely be attracted by the plot and then depart from the language to plot for about ten minutes later in the process of watching. At last, usually there are no further discuss and study about what they have learnt after class which would also decrease the final effect of playing English movies in English classes.Forth, many taboo words like obscene words, vulgar words, profane words and ominous words which would have bad influence to students exist in almost every English film.Fifth, it is quite time-consuming to play a film in school classes. For a film would last for an hour at least, but a course only have about 40 minutes, and, in university, not too many courses are arranged, no more to say English courses. It is one point worth considering when going playing a movie in English class for teachers.B. The problems exist in this new college English teaching method.Still, there are many problems in applying English films for English teaching, or rather to say there are some misunderstanding in both teachers and students on this new teaching method.First of all, the choice of movie mismatch the audience's learning needs which reflect at the following three aspects. The first aspect is neglecting the difficulty of films. The movie①周洁萍：《大学英语教学中的英文电影欣赏》[J]. 科技信息2009,(1):231that teachers choose is either too difficult or too easy for students, and has quite little help to students' study. The second aspect is without considering the film genres. Since it is hard for filmmakers to avoid appearing a few violence and sex scenes in order to cater to certain audience, but some teachers are not clear about the film and play it in class directly, result in bringing some improper sections to students. The third is that teachers ignored that in fact some types of film have no practical help to students' English, such as disaster film and science fiction film which is very popular among students but always win with shocking scenes that perhaps would last for ten or more minutes and with few dialogues which are really helpful and meaningful to students.Secondly, it's common that teachers ignoring the moral education goals. "The main manifestation of that is when selecting a film teachers seldom make moral education goals or seldom select a film according to the goals strictly."①This problem results in that the theme and content of the movie teachers playing in the class has no relation with our moral education aims or even in the opposite direction.Thirdly, the attitude of both some teachers and students toward it is not correct. They tend to treat playing an English movie in the English class as a kind of recreation. Some teachers just play it through computer, and then left the students to watch it by themselves until the end of the film when usually also the end of the class- period. So both many English teachers and students are very happy and welcome playing English films in class, for in their opinion that they can relax themselves and have a good time without any tasks to do.Fourthly but also most importantly, the teaching aims are undefined. As its known to all that each kind of English course, like intensive reading, extensive reading or oral English has clear teaching aims, and according to them the teacher scheme out the specific teaching procedure. However, at present, some English movie classes stay in the only appreciation stage. Looking at it from the whole aspect, we find that the current English movies played in the college English class do not match with the teaching aims, and looked at in specific, it lacks the necessary teaching-procedures devise, neither the teacher points out the teaching goals nor state briefly the language points and knowledge points. As a result, students' deepest①孙圣勇：《谈英语电影与大学英语学习》[J].电影评介2006,(10): 74depression of the film they watched is whether the hero is handsome and if the female leading role's clothing is fashionable or not and so on, all are the things that have nothing to do with language learning.V. The solutions to the problemsIn order to fulfill the superiority of English film in teaching, teachers should choose an appropriate movie, and adopt varied teaching methods.A. The movie selecting aspectThe choice of teaching material determines the quality of teaching effect. Student does not have any immunity to film, whether good or bad they are ready to accept it. But not all English movies are suitable for students to watch, and are helpful to their English.1. Choose English movie resources according to the teaching content.A good English movie should reveal the culture background and social customs from various aspects and angles, and reflect the content of real life. Selecting teaching materials of English movie need to consider the following four aspects: firstly, contain large amount of language information. Secondly, the film content is close to real life. Thirdly, the pronunciation should be articulate and simon-pure. Fourthly, related with what students had learnt. Only in this way can students learn the most standard pronunciation, tone, words and the ways to express feelings, and have double efforts. During teaching it is also appropriate to play some film segments that the language is abundant and has certain English language circumstance, such as: Family Album USA, Follow me. Students could feel the simon-pure American accent from their dialogues. If the teacher plan to teach something about British and American national customs and cultural characteristics, the films with the theme of sino-us cultural conflicts like, The Joy Luck Club, The Treatment and so on could help students realize the differences between Chinese and western countries better. And to understand the history of British and America, The Wind Has Gone and Forrest Gump are good choices. In addition, films like The Sounds of Music, Waterloo Bridge which with slow speaking speed and complete sentences are very suitable for students to learn English.2. Select a film according to the characters of students.Both recreation and students' English level and capacity of acceptance should be considered when selecting a film.First of all, film's content should be positive and healthy, be conducive to student's physical and mental development. What's more it should be educational. Movies are the same with all kinds of moral education means, they convey the social moral requirements and the related concepts to the audiences, and try to make the audience accept the social mainstream thoughts and moral requirement and value. So teachers should select the films are good for students to set up correct concept and correct view of western culture.Next, the dialogue in the film should match with students' English proficiency. For primary level students, teachers should choose films that are simple, speaking slowly, not too many technical terms and easy to understand, such as cartoons, The lion king, The little Mermaid, The Colors of The Wind, Beauty and the Beast, The Incredibles, Monster Shrek. Their language is lively and simple, and also the interludes are easy to learn. On the other hand, classic films like Roman Holiday, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, Pretty Woman, Jane Eyre and so on, are also very suitable for freshmen. Then, for intermediate level students, they not only need to learn language but also need to know something about English culture. So teachers should choose some films with relatively quick speak- speed, and contain certain historical background, like, Forrest Gump, Waterloo Bridge, Casablanca, The Philadelphia Story, Schindler's List and Brave Heart. And for high level students, some relatively difficult films with quick speak-speed and difficult words, for example, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, Romeo and Juliet and The Matrix are good for them.Then, the film's length should be medium. As English listening and speaking courses are about two weeks in all a semester, so when playing the documentary and popular science film which has highlighted theme, novel content, difficult language but poor plot, teachers should control the time within 60 minutes, or students would feel boring and at last decrease the teaching effect.What's more, teachers should try to select a film according to students' textbook. The reading and writing courses emphasize student's reading and writing ability, whereas the film could complement it adequately through emphasizing listening and speaking ability. For example, in College English (III), The Woman Who Would Not Tell, described the cruel sceneof American Civil War impressively, in order to let the students understand the war more comprehensively, and get to know the brutality of the war, teachers can choose the film "Gone With the Wind" which was awarded many Oscar awards as the teaching material.Besides, teachers should choose English movie resources that match students' practical level. The cinematographic language should neither too difficult nor too easy. If it is too difficult to understand, students would feel frustrated and then lose interest. While too easy would let students feel that they gain nothing. What's more, during the four semesters continuous college English teaching, teachers' choice of movie materials should follow the principle of from easy to difficult.At the same time, as the English film related resources in the internet is voluminous, and due to the limitation of their experience and knowledge level, students don't know how to make a choice when facing such abundant resources. So teachers need to recommend some good English films and websites to guide them to take good advantage of the Internet resources.3. According to the need of teaching reference to choose movie's version and format.In order to meet the needs of teaching better, teachers need to do following things. Firstly, teachers should choose stereo compressed and closed-circuit subtitles mode so that could transfer English and Chinese dub and subtitle freely according to the teaching content and students' characteristics. Secondly, it would be better to choose films that with corresponding text materials, and the assorted tape or the mp3 sound files, so teachers could train students listening ability and make up for the shortcoming of having no enough time in class. Fourthly, choose the films that students are interested in and having no much difficulty to understand it. So they would watch it themselves after class.B. The utilization pattern aspectTeacher's role in English movie classes should be designer, the leader, learner or researcher. Watching English original movies is not a monodirectional learning process thatteachers playing and students watching. To fulfill the original film language's teaching advantages, to cultivate students' comprehensive language ability, to understand and digest the knowledge in the film, teachers must design specific teaching activities well. Without elaborate designed teaching environment, watching a movie could become a mere formality.1. Make good preparation before watching the chosen filmFilms selected, but teachers still need to prepare for the accordingly work to improve the teaching efficiency. As for the time limit, sometimes teachers have to prune away part of the film, only play some splendid fragments. Teachers should pre-printed the historical background, the outline of the story, characters list, excellent and different words and sentences about the selected film in advance to the students before class .Then students could according to the different characteristics of the film and their own study condition to look for references information initiatively. Of course, the thinking and information should be in English as a medium, so students can master many related words and get ready in the language aspect.2.Arrange the watching process scientificallyWhen watching the film, the teacher should introduce the outline briefly to students according to the information given to them ahead. If it is going to play the clips, teacher also needs to introduce the historical background, plot summary and the relationship between the characters. At the same time, students should be required to grasp the following four key words. One is "blend into". Don't regard yourself as bystander but as insider. Second is "breakthrough". The key point of this is mimicry, imitation cannot without reciting until one is so skilled that you can blurt out. Three is "extension". To expand vocabulary and sentence at one hand, at another hand is that each film should be seen at least three times or more. Fourth is "excavation". Students should not merely understand the surface meaning, but to see the essence through the phenomena, to excavate the profound cultural connotation from the language so that to achieve the supreme state of listening and speaking of foreign knowledge learning.3. Organize after-watching activities."①Watching a film is not the final purpose, but to improve students' English application ability. Guide students to organize certain after-watching activities to combine the language input with language output." So students could put what they have learnt into usage, and feel the concrete progress they achieved. That is the key point of playing and watching a film in English class. Therefore, the teacher should think out some activities for students, like, retelling the story of the film, acting the roles of the film, debating or discussing, or writing down their thoughts and feelings, analyses the trait of the characters, recite the classic dialogues, or try to dub for the roles and so on. Let students put the ways of express they have learnt into practical writing and discussing to improve their writing and speaking ability instead for forgetting what they have learnt with the time went by. What’s more, doing the matched exercises is an indispensable part of work.C. The team-work of teachers.As the old saying that two heads are better than one. Teachers need to work together to overcome all the difficulties and problems of giving a good English film class. Especially because of the teaching method of applying English movies in college English teaching is still in its early stage in China and the lack of available textbooks and reference books on this field at present, teachers need team work within an university even between universities particularly. For example, they could share their selected suitable and excellent films with each other. Also, they could share their lesson-plans or designs in the form of open classes and symposiums. And the experience of oversea universities on this aspect also could be useful and helpful.D. The conversion of teachers and students’ attitude.It’s true that a ttitude decides everything. It is also true that some teachers and students do not treat playing an English movie seriously. In their opinion, it is a way of relax. Especially, some teachers just play it and then they let it go. So it is of great importance to converse their attitude, to treat it seriously and correctly. Only when they have a right attitude to English movies could it fulfill its advantages. That is the prerequisites of the next work.VI. Conclusion①金怡文:《采用原声电影进行英语教学之策略初探》 [J].华章 2010,(8):113In the new century, traditional education has gradually been replaced by the more effective means and methods, as the society is no longer satisfied with the traditional teaching concentrating on offering the basic knowledge and skills of a language via transfer of grammatical knowledge and explanation of vocabulary usages in a teacher-centered way. With the development of modern society, it’s convenient for us to find more suitable means and methods for college English teaching. It has been proved that English movie could help English teaching and learning. That’s to say, it is based on the features of language learning and teaching, taking culture background into consideration. They permit students to learn English in a more harmonious and interesting environment. Students’ motivation can be aroused, and flexibility in real occasions will be cultivated. Being aware of students’ individuality and psychological state can help teachers to maximize the effectiveness of these specific fulfillments in class.This paper gives suggestions for teachers on how to plan their English movie lessons for English teaching by searching for suitable movie resources and scientific applying patterns, conversing teachers and students' attitude and teamwork of teachers. The use of these specific fulfillments is not a casual experiment, but well-planned available teaching fulfillment. The employment of these means and methods in class ought to be revised with the changing teaching goals and teaching design syllabus. More importantly, attention should be paid to the non-intellectual factors of students. In this way, these specific fulfillments will realize the development of English movie in college English teaching and prove their effectiveness.References[1] Keith Johnson: An Introduction to Foreign Language Learning and Teaching [M].外语教学与研究出版社, 2002[2] Whatton.W.Victor: The uses of film in the teaching of English [M]. Ontario Institute for studies of Education, 1971[3] Andrew Goodwyn: English Teaching and Media Education [M]. 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