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Penguin Readers Teacher’s Guide to Using Film and TV Carolyn Walker
Contents Introduction
2
Graded Readers: some preliminary comments
2
Video as a classroom medium
2
Video films and Graded Readers
3
Teaching reading and the use of video films
3
Technical points when using video films in class
4
Choosing and developing video materials for Graded Readers
4
Using video clips with a class Reader: some activities and suggestions Before reading the book or sections of the book Using video to preview the story Using video for vocabulary teaching Comprehension of the video clip
5 5 7 7
After reading short sections of the book Inferring Same or different? Further suggestions for homework
9 9 10 10
After reading the book Using clips Using the whole film Projects
11 11 11 12
Bibliography
12
Photocopiable Student's Worksheets 1 Establishing the characters 2 Previewing a part of the book 3 Getting the picture 4 The starting point 5 Thinking about character 6 From book to film 7 Conversation: same or different? 8 Timelines: same or different? 9 Remembering the characters 10 Favourite scenes 11 Book compared to film 12 A film review
Introduction
Video as a classroom medium
A large number of the books in the Penguin Readers series have been made into a feature film or TV series or are written from the screenplay of a feature film or TV series. These films are widely available on video. Why shouldn’t teachers make use of this very valuable resource in the classroom? This book is intended to provide teachers with some ideas for using video films in conjunction with Graded Readers.
Teachers have been using video in language teaching for many years. The combination of sound and vision is a particularly exciting and dynamic way of exposing learners to language. Video is intrinsically motivating: the screen captures our attention in a way quite unlike other media. Contextualized information Video offers learners an opportunity to experience spoken language in action in the next best way to being in the language community itself. Most of the features of a real communicative situation are present: as well as the soundtrack, there is also a wealth of visual information which accompanies the language. For example, with a video, learners can see what the setting of the story is and what the characters look like, which both provides contextual information and aids comprehension. Learners can see clues in the physical setting as to the formality or informality of the situation, which will be important for the type of vocabulary, structures, stress, rhythm and intonation they will hear. In addition, learners can see how people move as they speak, how their bodies move in time with the rhythm of their speech, what their arm gestures and facial expressions are, and the general ‘set’ of the mouth and jaw in the articulation of speech sounds. They can see how eye contact plays a role in spoken communication, along with other non-linguistic ways in which people relate to each other. All of these aspects will provide learners with a wealth of linguistic, paralinguistic and cross-cultural information which will enable comparison with their own language and culture. Visual aid An important point, already hinted at above, is that video can act as a visual aid for language learning. In language teaching we make much use of photographs and other types of still picture to help teach and to provide stimuli for the practice of language. Using video films for this purpose gives an added dimension – namely that of time and movement. A sequence from a video film, whether with sound or not, can depict narrative in a way that is quite impossible with