Sunday, November 12, 2006

Films and teaching


As people who read this blog regularly (hi, mum!) will know I just love using films when teaching as I believe they are a rich source of language opportunities. My only gripe is that the vast majority of EFL/ESL teaching exercises based around movies treat them as little more than listening comprehension tests with visuals (I think I will scream if I see yet another gap-fill exercise). Given the vast range of possibilities the medium offers it seems a shame just to repeat tired, old teaching techniques that were created thirty or forty years ago for use with cassette recorders.

So, once again I've had to look out of the well in order to find fresher, more up - to - date activities. Luckily, today I came across the BFI (The British Film Institute) site (see here) which has a lot of educational material aimed at British students studying for their GCSE's. While, the materials are not tailored for the EFL/ESL learner there are loads of teaching possibilities and activities which could be used with post intermediate classes.

The only drawback is that the exercises are based on short films that you have to be a member of the BFI to access. However, I'm sure that they can be substituted by other film extracts.

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