Abstract:

Incorporating performance arts such as music, theatre, and movies in English Language Teaching (ELT) in scarce if at all. However, it is generally assumed that improving oral proficiency through such mediums is highly effective. McIntire (2007), for example, argues that the use of music not only enhances learning through emotional involvement, it also improves learners’ decoding, listening, thinking, expressive, and memorization skills.
While plays have at times been incorporated within the schedule of certain schools as part of their extra curricular activities, movies have to be introduced yet. In other words, students’ involvement in movies and movie making as part of a learning project is indeed an innovation. For the past three years, more than 60 students with ages ranging from 7 to 27 have experienced learning a foreign language through active involvement in short movies.

In this presentation, I report the results of an experiment in which young English language learners take part in a movie production and learn from a script. Pre-movie oral samples and final production samples show tremendous improvement at various language levels ranging from the sound phoneme to the entire utterance. The audience will watch a sample 8 minute-movie involving young French adult learners of English followed by a brief survey of current relevant literature, a brief description of the project objectives, its learning outcomes, its uniqueness, and feedback from both learners, parents, and field experts. The presentation sheds more light at the emerging effort of incorporating traditional sources of entertainment into language learning along the lines of Nadon-Gabrion (2001), Evans (2004), Bird (2005), and Lems (2005).

Keywords:

Language learning, performing arts, film making.