USING HARRY POTTER MOVIES FOR TOEIC PRACTICE

Quidditch? Hogwarts? On the TOEIC?? Not yet, but DVD's are popular teaching tools these days; Harry Potter films are especially useful for TOEIC practice. Various dialogues and scenes lend themselves to standardized test practice. For example, there are scenes without dialogue for Section 1 (Photographs) practice. There are a number of dialogues with short lines and sufficient space between lines to help lower-level students process the information. For the higher-level students, there are longer monologues for more difficult listening practice.

Most students are familiar with Harry Potter series. As there is no "spells" or "snake language" exam pressure and Harry Potter is make-believe, there is a noticeable lowering of the affective filter as students enthusiastically practice "spells" & snake language (which include many sounds that are difficult for Japanese students). Included in this presentation are warm-up activities such as vocabulary review and a Question and Answer Sorting activity (in Harry Potter 1, students are sorted into 4 "Houses") and optional pair work tasks that do not require the use of the DVD.