Introducing English to EFL/ESL Students
When it comes to teaching English in a classroom different ways to do so can be thought of as long as you consider some important aspects. What does “important aspects” mean anyway? This was the first question that came to my mind. Any non-teacher may think of, verbs, pronunciation, grammar, and so forth. However, in order to understand a language it is important to know what it’s all about; having in mind that a language is the representation of a culture behind and define it at its highest level. So, the question that will lead this piece of writing and I hope to answer by the end of it is, How do a movie can help students and teachers to reach the goal of learning a language?
First of all, how does a teacher motivate an EFL/ESL student who doesn’t like English, doesn’t understand the language but surprisingly enough he/she is willing to learn the language? I reckon that most of the teachers, not to say all of them have experienced a situation like this. It can be very frustrating if you don’t find the right way to deal with it. I would say that what is more important here is to show students that a language is not just a bunch of words that when are put together in a certain way can form sentences, this is just too basic! Students have to be aware of the culture that is behind a language and it’s the teacher job to make it happen. Something that is really helpful to do so is to make students get involved with the reality of such culture (Brown, 2000), how do I do so if I don’t have money to travel with my students to such country? It is not necessary! A very interesting tool is to watch movies based on some specific time at first in order they understand the “origins” or story of the language. A really good example could be the movie “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”, it is a movie full of important facts that in some way affected the culture, beliefs, and the history of the British culture.
Secondly, it is known that when a person faces a language they are full of prejudices towards it and it is normal! We are humans and just for being so we are sentenced to live a life full of preconceptions, and again here is where the teacher plays its role. Since teachers are important part of the education and also called scaffolds between the student and the information, they need to be in charge of showing the language and its culture as real as it could be shown. I remember I thought most of the people from America were selfish, shallow, just worried about power, and a never-ending list of other prejudices. However, when I started seeing English as a representation of a culture and that such culture was not just one but a lot of different sub-cultures I understood that I was being just narrow-minded and I unconsciously didn’t want to see beyond. Therefore, as I said before, movies are great tools to do so. Students can make a link between the language that they are taught and the one that is actually spoken which is really different, it can be used as a tool for critical thinking how? Students can be told to write essays, film reviews and journals to practice and maybe develop their critical thinking skills.
Although watching movies can be a pretty helpful tool to practice different skills, it can be sometimes an obstacle to understand some specific issue or facts if the person watching the movie is not ready to do so. Consequently, a person has to be mature enough to be able understand it.
In conclusion, as I already said a movie can be a really good tool for teachers to introduce a language and culture, it can help to develop some skills, movies may get students motivated easier than with a piece of writing, but overall it can be a tool for the students to have a meaningful learning and I think that this is what we are all expecting to happen.
