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英语影视教学-Teaching and Learning English Through Vide

2013-09-15 01:30

[Abstract] Since the development of science and technology and the quality-oriented education are gradually valued by the whole society in recent years, the reform of the English class has been increasingly recognized, the aim of which is to enable students to use English effectively. Teaching English through the original movie series as a new teaching method has been carried out in many colleges. The feedback from students has proved that with the broad development of this teaching method involved in intonation, wording, speech, thinking and culture students can make further progress. As the communicative approach is gradually valued by the people, videos not only provide a form of entertainment to people, but also are used as a good way to teach or learn English. Based on the situation of them and their advantages and disadvantages, this article emphasizes the importance of the teachers’ role and requirement, the video option and time arrangement in the whole teaching process. At last, this article also offers some teaching methods and activities from pre-watching, while-watching to post-watching, in the hope of making the videos produce a marked effect in English teaching and learning. 
[Key Words] English videos; situation; advantages and disadvantages; teaching methods and activities

【摘 要】 近年来随着科技的发展和素质教育越来越受社会的重视，英语教学的改革也不断受到重视，其目的是使学生更有效地运用英语。而通过英文原版影视剧进行英语教学作为一种新的教学方法，已在许多高校得到开展。这种教学方式可以在语音、用词、会话、思维和文化等进一步提高学生的英语应用能力。如今英语影视不仅是一种娱乐方式，更是人们学习外语的好帮手，它具有广大的发展空间。本文根据影视英语教学现状及优缺点的分析，着重强调了教师在影视教学中的作用及要求、影片选择和时间安排的重要性。最后本文在对英语影视教学中如何更有效地使用英语影片分别从课前、课时、课后三方面来提出一些教学方法和活动类型。本文的目的是为了使影视片在英语教学中发挥最大的效用。

（转载自http://www.ＮＳＥＡＣ.com中国科教评价网）

【关键词】 英语影视、教学现状、优缺点、教学方法和活动类型

1. Introduction
Since the open-up in China these decades and the development of science, the video is widely used in English class. A shift of emphasis in foreign language teaching and learning from Grammar-Translation Approach to Communicative Approach has taken place in recent years. Now the communicative competence of English is essential for English learners. Meanwhile, there have been remarkable developments in English language teaching and learning. Teachers have been employing various ways to develop students’ abilities and improve the quality of ELT. Although various methods and techniques have been used to try to improve students’ ability to communicate in English, studies have proved that videos are quite an effective medium for English teaching and learning. “Harmer (1983:21) thinks that ‘the idea of simulation is to create the pretence of a real life situation in the classroom where students simulate the real world.’” [1] The videos just have this effect as it can offer us a real life world. Teaching and learning English through videos makes the process natural, educational and enjoyable. This article reveals the situations of using videos in English teaching and learning, advantages and disadvantages. This paper also discusses how to improve English teaching and learning with this effective media.

2. The present situations of using videos
In recent years, the use of videos in English classes has grown rapidly in China as a result of the increasing emphasis on communicative teaching techniques. Being a rich and valuable resource, videos are popular with both students and teachers in China, now videos not only provide a form of entertainment to people, but also are used as a way to learn English language. “The video course offered to college and university students of a conversation class is called shitingshuo. In Chinese shiting means ‘watching and listening’ and shuo means ‘speaking’. As listening and speaking are the two major skills students should acquire, the video course not only teaches English through video but also gets students to use the English they have learnt in talking about the video.”[2] （转载自中国科教评价网www.nseac.com ）
Some students like video course, because they can learn a lot from people about their personality, their attitudes towards life, and cultural background in different countries besides language. They can also enjoy many activities such as role-play, group discussion, debates and so on. While other students who are used to spoon-feeding teaching method are worried about the video, they think watching videos will waste their limited learning time and large class size brings about great difficulties in oral practice activities. Teachers also have their opinions on it, some think that videos can help them motivate their students’ activity, encourage them to practice their oral English and provide a lot of cultural information. However, there are also some teachers not good at using machines and are uncomfortable with using new equipments. They just play the video from beginning to the end in class.
    Therefore, in video course, if the students just take watching video for fun or entertainment; if the students lack in due attention or anxiety; if the time of watching is so little that they cannot thoroughly understand the plot; if there is even no activity or exercise after a video sequence and teachers let it go at that, video becomes totally an entertainment rather than serving as a teaching aid for certain purposes, whichever will cause a great waste to the basic modern appliances or equipments in the facility, and teachers should pay more attention to English teaching through videos, as they are not only widely used in English teaching but also their advantages out weight their disadvantages.

3. Advantages and disadvantages of using videos
3.1 Advantages of using videos
Even though a great number of media have tried to improve students’ English especially their speaking and listening ability, there are few that can be compared to videos. This effective media can be seen in the following reasons:
3.1.1 Videos provide motivating materials to both students and teachers
“Motivation and attitudes are important factors, which help to determine the level of proficiency achieved by different learners.”[3] An original video can be very motivating and interesting if it describes real-life situations, real-life people and real-life language. During the learning process, if we employ films as the teaching material, language learning will become enjoyable.

（科教论文网 lw.nSeAc.com编辑发布）

The materials that films provide are both audio and visual, which help students learn English more easily. That’s because while students are watching a film, students not only listen to the characters’ speech but also watch their movements, beautiful heroines and handsome heroes, appreciate beautiful scenery and listen to pleasant songs and fluent dialogues. These can really motivate students’ initiative and enable them to learn in a relaxing and cheerful atmosphere. In addition, the scenes, the lines or other aspects that films bring will probably influence learners’ capacity as they do in real life. When they finish the film and return to the real life, they may think of some topics related to the film and speak out the language more spontaneously. For example, when they watch Kramer vs. Kramer, they may think of the women problems in present society: Should a woman’s place be limited to her own home or not? After they watch Saving Private Ryan, they may think about the problem between war and humanist: Is it worthy of risking eight soldiers’ lives to save Ryan for the purpose of booting morale on the homefront? [4] The teachers can also ask students to discuss these questions after seeing the film. Films are the motivating materials of learning English for students and teachers. 
3.1.2 Videos show real-life situations in which characters speak their own language
For most Chinese learners, they lack the authentic English language-learning environment. So in most cases, they always speak English in their own ways and don’t consider whether it’s accurate or not. As time goes by, they get used to expressing “Chinese English”, which is full of mistakes and feels so strange to foreigners. On one hand, they are also amused in some sentences. Because the language in a book they usually learn has been polished again and again by the writer, and even the communication in it is polished. Thus it is unreal and not suitable for being used in films. [5] What’s more, there are many calumnies, slangs, idioms in videos, so it is hard enough to become proficient in different styles of the language. However, learning to speak depends upon hearing someone else speak，so English films do have positive effects in this respect. For example: （科教论文网 lw.nSeAc.com编辑发布）
    (1) You don’t say.
(2) Cops, freeze.
The first sentence is wrong if you understand it in this way “You’d better not speak more”. The real meaning is “Really?” The second sentence is often heard in some action films. “Freeze” here not means cold storage. In America, it means “Don’t move” The whole sentence means “We are polices, don’t move.” Sometime the same sentence has different meanings, such as “take care of him” (from the film Graduation), surface meaning is “look after”, while the deep meaning is “deal with”. It also has different meanings in different situations. The police said it with his teeth gnashed means “kill him”. [6]
In a word, the language that characters speak is original; therefore, students can use English in more appropriate way through videos.
3.1.3 Videos are also a good source of classroom activity
The source of classroom activity is a concern for most English teachers. Because of the difficulties in looking for suitable video materials, teachers often cancel classroom activity. Then teachers actually become speech deliverers and students play the part of listeners instead of active participants in this teaching and learning process. But films provide a good source of classroom activity and motivate students to join in it. While watching the video, teachers can pause the film to let the students think about some certain questions in the film, for example answer some questions, and act out the play and so on. In a word, during watching the video the teacher can provide more opportunities for students to take part in it, as videos are a good source of classroom activity.  
3.1.4 Videos are a good source of information about culture
“Compared with any other kind of teaching aid, video has quite a unique advantage in introducing foreign culture. Video works could show the actual situation of a town, a city, or a country and the real structure of culture, things like geographic features, national customs and citizen characteristics and so on.” [7] Culture is the necessary context for language learning. Videos just can be used as vehicles for teaching different culture, like literature videos are rich in the cultural background of those English-speaking countries; they consciously or unconsciously transmit the views, values, beliefs, attitudes and feelings of English-speaking society, which can help students to know that culture from various angles. For example, the film Gone with the Wind provides a great deal of information about American Civil War. In the film Forrest Gump, we can learn not only some history events, such as the Ku Klux Klan, Civil War, sexual liberation, the assassination of American president, the Blackman movement, Vietnam War, Watergate scandal and so on, but also learn some local customs and practices like the school bus, single parent family, the rugby match, the students’ life in kindergarten, primary school and university. Just the sentence in the beginning of the film “My momma always said life was a box of chocolates. You never know what you get” puzzles us a lot, and it refers to the different packages and contents between America and China.[8] So watching videos is an effective teaching method in learning foreign culture, they help students have a better understanding of the cultural knowledge in foreign countries, and to some extent avoid leading to cross-cultural misunderstanding.

（转载自科教范文网http://fw.nseac.com）

Due to these advantages, films have become more and more popular with English learners. But is it perfect to be employed totally to conduct through the whole English teaching and learning? Are there any problems that will be encountered in a video course? What difficulties will the students have? These years, in order to create an authentic language-learning environment, many colleges and universities have provided students an opportunity to watch movies once or twice a week. However, to most students, this weekly event is more like an entertainment than a learning activity. Without any guidance or instruction from teachers, students just enjoy the experience of watching, they are unlikely to benefit from movies.
3.2 Disadvantages of using videos
Although there are many advantages of using videos through English teaching and learning, the problems raised during practical teaching and learning cannot be ignored.
3.2.1 Only some videos can be adopted as teaching and learning materials
On one hand, class teaching is based on textbook; teachers only can choose some videos that are fit for the content in the textbook. “On the other hand due to different cultural background and social value, some of the video from the West World contain some certain kind of content, which is not appropriate for the unprepared and immature minds, such as films with some scenes of violence, despair, drugs, pornography and so on.” [9] And though the English videos are related to our life, they more or less create some unreal, heroic images that often appear unruly and without discipline. What’s more, in some videos their language is vulgar; words like “shit, fuck, damn, a son of bitch …”have appeared more and more frequently in youngsters’ lips. Imitation is important for language study, but it is not wise to imitate the language of bad impacts on students’ morality. Some films even have some false ideas against the history. [10] What’s more, the time for class teaching is limited, but the films chosen for textbook teaching always take long time to be finished. So it is hard to select a suitable film for teaching.

（科教作文网http://zw.nseAc.com）

3.2.2 Videos cannot satisfy different levels of students
Certainly, there are different levels of students’ proficiency in class. Generally, according to their level of proficiency of English, students can be divided into three groups: elementary (students who usually have small vocabulary and cultural knowledge of English, [11] limited in listening and speaking), intermediate (students who are reasonable at listening and speaking), advanced (students who have both developed their linguistic and communicative competence).[12] For those advanced and intermediate students, a video course is good for them to better improve and even consolidate their listening and speaking ability. But it’s not so reasonable for those elementary students, because the video language is spoken too fast or naturally to understand. There are few they can catch or understand, so it’s harder for them to get the whole idea of the video and the purpose for teaching the textbook through a related video fails.
3.2.3 Videos can be a distractive thing during the learning
As we know, videos gather the text, mark, animation, sound and image, which provide the lifelike seeing and hearing effect for English teaching. The combination of sound vision is dynamic, immediate and quite easily accessible. It is much more attractive, interesting and impressive than common material printed in books or audible material in tape. It could greatly increase the students’ enthusiasm and imagination. [13] However, just because of these wonderful abilities of video, the students pay less attention to what they actually heard. When watching the video, they are often distracted by the lively visual senses. Some also worry students might treat it as they treat watching television, lazily, uncritically. So Jack Wang thinks that video is less useful for teaching listening and speaking than audiotape. [14]
Although these weaknesses of using videos have been an obstacle during the teaching and learning process, people still persist in employing it as an important medium. If there will be more and more videos chosen to fit the textbook, and if the video course could be satisfactorily carried out with both the help of students and teachers, the advantages of using videos will ultimately outweigh its disadvantages. What’s more in order to make the video class effective, we should know the teachers’ role and requirement. There must be some methods to be used and some activities to be prepared and to be best utilized for English teaching and learning. As mentioned above, one problem of using films is the difficulty in serving different levels of students. So the methods used and the activities designed must target different levels of students’ proficiency in class, otherwise, those advanced students will learn English better and better, but those elementary will lose interest in English. Then both teachers and learners won’t achieve their desired goals.

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