This series of blogs will provide details of how to incorporate feature length films in the classroom. Discover how to help your students learn English (or any language) with film.

Movies are one of the richest resources available to language learners. They offer a sensory portal into the language and cultures of other people. No other medium provides the wealth of visual, audible, contextual and emotional connection that film has to offer.

Immersive: Unlike the conscious learning that takes place in a traditional classroom, film communicates directly through images and sound.  Students are immersed in a world in which they see, hear, read, experience, discover dialects and accents, and all from the comfort of their seat.

Lexically Rich: Learners encounter features of natural conversation in an endless variety of situations, particularly idioms, phrasal verbs and common slang. They are also  exposed to an enormous wealth of vocabulary – an average movie contains over ten thousand words that wash over the captivated audience.

Authentic Language: Movies are not made for language learners. Everything spoken in movies reflects how native speakers communicate. It’s fast paced, laced with idioms, often mumbled, but delivered by artists trained in the art of communication.

Endless Topics for Discussion: Apart from lexical content movies provide endless topics for discussion. With an average 600 movies released each year in the US alone, on themes ranging from LGBT, racism, coming of age, sport, travel, education, space, the natural world, growing old, love, music,etc, etc, there will never be a shortage of issues to discuss  in class.

Upcoming Blogs: In a series of upcoming blogs, I will go into detail on how to introduce students to a movie (warmer), set homework, screen a movie and discuss it afterwards in pairs. Each blog will contain comprehensive notes on a specific film

Watch this space for more details!