The thought of watching a Spanish or French movie with my classes has always appealed to me. It develops listening and comprehension skills which are keys to then improve pronunciation and speaking skills. By watching a moving in the target language you can acquire a lot of vocabulary and you can also learn so much about the culture, especially if the movie is linked to a cultural or historical event.

However, when I intend to show a movie to my students, I usually put the movie on and sit at the back of the class until the end of the movie. Sometimes, I pause the movie to check understanding in English or to see if students have picked up some specific expressions. At the end of the movie, I have a list of questions to ask to the students to again check understanding. Somehow I have never felt right with this method and I have never felt my students were gaining as much as I wanted them to.

The other day, a post entitled “MovieTalk” caught my attention. At last, a productive method when watching a movie? Well, yes according to its official website: “MovieTalk is a powerful, enjoyable technique that you can use to boost your students’ second-language listening comprehension. All you need is a collection of suitable movies on DVD, equipment for showing them to your class, and knowledge of the technique itself.” The website explains in details how to deliver “MovieTalk” from choosing the right movie, to preparing it, to finally presenting it to the students.

I have not tried the technique yet but I already like the fact that teachers can use movies with students who are below the intermediate level, and even with beginners. The teacher narrates the scenes as they occur in the movie. Narration is key in MovieTalk and “it involves naming objects, describing actions, and talking about the characters and their emotions. We can think of narration as the kind of running description we might give to a person who could not see the movie but wanted to know what was going on at all times. For example: “There is a man on a horse. It’s a white horse. He’s riding very fast. His face looks angry.”
There is a lot of repetition and rephrasing which is perfect for language acquisition.

What about? How do you use films in your lessons?