Abstract:

Faculty of cinema is an activity that has taken place at the University of Cádiz (Spain) for the last nine years. With the aim of improving the level of English of students, original version films are screened once a week during the second semester of the academic year. A vocabulary with the main lexis of each film is provided to the students beforehand. After watching the film, the participants have to complete some exercises in the Virtual Campus. Likewise, debate is promoted in the screening room as well as in the Virtual Campus forum.

Every year a trainee student supports all the necessary work to prepare the activities implemented in Faculty of Cinema. Among the criteria for the selection of the trainee students are their level of English, educational skills and their interest in cinema. In order to foster the motivation of the attendants, with the help of the professors, our many innovation activities are proposed and conducted by the trainee´s students: tests about the movies, on-line quizs, oral and written contests, poster contest, etc. All these innovation activities are described and evaluated in this work. To conclude the activity, a virtual contest of cinematographic culture is carried out using the tool Excel of Microsoft, preparing an Excel template each year with questions and answers in English which is downloadable from the Virtual Campus of the subject on the particular PC or Smartphone of each student. The program itself provides the answer automatically to the solutions provided by the students, qualifying them as correct or incorrect, and indicates to the student when he / she has completed all the answers satisfactorily.

Some results that demonstrate that the activities have succeed are:
- The number of students enrolled was growing every year until reaching the maximum allowed in the course for logistical reasons: 200 students.
- The average grade of students in the activities has increased by 15%.
- The average grade of the activity by the student has risen from year to year to 9.0 out of 10. On average, 97% of the students would recommend the activity to a classmate.

In certain contexts of learning, such as courses of voluntary enrollment, reinforcement or support, the innovation activities described in this work can be useful as a teaching resource to improve the motivation of students.

Keywords:

Cinema, English improvement, evaluation activities, trainee students, surveys.