Why Using Films in the classroom is Useful and Beneficial for EFL Students?

It does not matter how old we are, we all love stories. Students get to see a lot of stories in written formats when they study at school, but sometimes stories portrayed in films are forgotten in instructional contexts, and this is a terrible mistake because children, teenagers and adults love them!

To begin with, it is necessary to clarify something very important: using films for teaching English is not a waste of time! Many teachers are reluctant to use these tools in their classrooms because they think that they waste a lot of time when watching a film. However, we must remind those teachers that they do not have to use an entire film to teach English, they can just use video clips from a film they have chosen and that is perfect both for teachers and for your students, because you use your time wisely and your students do not get bored easily when using short clips.

To follow with, the benefits of using films in the EFL classroom are as valuable as the benefits of using music in this instructional setting. First, students have the opportunity of having contact with English in a "real context". Although stories presented are mainly fictional, English is still used in the same way native speakers use it. Secondly, films can provide teachers with an attractive way of teaching new vocabulary!! If you present your students a video clip with subtitles, you can share new words with them, and work with those words in future activities. Thirdly, films promote students' motivation in the classroom! As teachers, we can do lots of activities based on the films they like, or that they feel identify with, and in that way they will be more willing to participate actively in the class.

Additionally, an extra-remark is needed here: subtitles in English can always be extremely useful to help students understand what the characters are talking about. Students usually have a hard time when trying to understand native speakers of English who speak fast, and usually in films native speakers DO speak very fast! In order to help your students to cope with this situation, add English subtitles to the video clips you will share, and they will not feel so lost.

In order to share a good example of a video clip that gathers all the benefits that have been previously presented, here you have an excerpt from the famous film "Catching Fire", the second film of the novel-based saga "The Hunger Games. If your students are teenagers and love this saga, they will totally enjoy doing an activity based on this video-clip:

Why using music in the classroom is beneficial for language learning?

Although this blog is about using films and music in the EFL classroom, today we will start by analysing in a deeper way why music can be an excellent tool at the moment of teaching a foreign language.

To begin with, it is necessary to say that music is an essential element of our lives; everyone has their own favourite songs and artists, and we always listen to music to relax or to have fun. These aspects are also present when using music in the EFL classroom, and as teacher you can provide your students with a more friendly environment in the classroom, and also you will show them that it is possible to have fun while learning a new language.

Secondly, when it comes to analyse the use of music to teach specific aspects of English, it is possible to notice that music can help students to acquire new vocabulary in a more natural way, because new words are used in a certain context which is provided by the song(s) you are using. Additionally, music is also extremely useful to practice pronunciation. Thus, you can have your students singing a song and at the same time you are showing them how words in that song are pronounced. 

Thirdly, using songs in the classroom can bring the class together, due to the fact that music has always been an important element of social interaction, Consequently, when your whole class sings a song (and obviously you sing with them too), they are all sharing a very special moment in which they can interact with each other and in which they can see that they are equally important in their group. Moreover, it has proven that group singing increases the level of oxytocin, a substance that when is liberated in our bodies "enhances feelings of trust and bonding, which may explain why still more studies have found that singing lessens feelings of depression and loneliness" ("Singing changes your brain", 2013)

To sum up, we can say that the use of music in the classroom can help language learning not just in terms of the acquisition of formal aspects like vocabulary or pronunciation, but it can help students to feel more relaxed in the EFL classroom, and it also gives them the opportunity of having a good time at the sime time that they share a wonderful experience of social interaction.

If you want to see how a real teacher uses music in the EFL classroom, watch this video and pay attention to the marvelous experience that this teacher has had with her students. Enjoy!

REFERENCES:

Singing Changes your Brain (2013, August 16). Time. Retrieved from: http://ideas.time.com/2013/08/16/singing-changes-your-brain/ 

What is my blog about?

When teaching English as a foreign language, teachers always have to use all their creativity in order to come up with new ideas and activities for  every class, Obviously, this is not always an easy task, considering the idea that their students may seem reluctant to learn the language and consider it boring, and because of this, it is even more important for teachers to prepare interesting and appealing activities for them, in order to let them having a good time while learning English.

Under these circumstances, films and music have been widely use in the EFL classroom, and they have been considered as useful and entertaining tools to teach English. Additionally, teachers and students value the use of these kind of resources when learning this language, because there is always an endless amount of activities that can be done with them.

For these reasons, this blog has been created in order to help both teachers and students with interesting ideas about how, when, and why it is important to use Films and Music in the EFL Classroom.