Movie talk: a great stratedy to engage students in the L2 and add another dimension to your instruction!

Ever seen a short video on Facebook or YouTube that you cannot wait to share or talk about with a friend? 

Imagine now using that video to engage and inspire students to listen carefully and want to contribute to a discussion!

Julia, one of our middle school teachers, found a Christmas video that is so good I just had to share it with you all! If I were in the classroom this year I might have adapted it to use in all levels, either as practice for the final or as part of it!

Movie Talk is simply an ESL technique that has been used in that world for decades. (Click here for a great description + history + suggestions about how to use the technique.)  

Movie Talk involves showing segments (sometimes just screenshots) of a video and asking questions about what is on the screen: virtually any linguistic concept can be addressed (from low level description to very high level discussions about what characters are thinking or feeling).

Since the questions are adapted to the audience (so the clip is just as useful for native speakers or level they can be used for any class: Who is in the scene? How many people are in the scene? Who is not there? Why? What are they like? Are they happy? Why? Why not? What is important to them? What is the problem? Is your life similar or different? Why? What do you think is going to happen? What is the girl looking for when she looks through the curtain? Why does the girl not dance when the music starts? How can the father help? What does he do? Why is he a good father?

Obviously questions are circled (same question asked in a different way) and answers repeated enough so that all learners can respond.

• Here are several examples in action of teachers using movie talk to engage students.
• Here is a video of a teacher using movie talk and reading the first three days of Spanish 1!
• Here is a link to lots of appropriate videos for movie talk!

A good goal in a level one class might be to be able to say 10 things about the video. In an advanced class it might be a retelling of the story giving insight into what the characters might be thinking.
I often turn the video into a story the next day that we read together in class. The story can parallel the video exactly or be a "parallel universe" story that goes another direction and provokes classroom discussion.

Movie talk components explained by a CI master teacher:  

However you use this strategy, Movie Talk can add life, variety and comprehensible input to your classroom! Gracias Julia!!!

This idea has been added to the district’s ‘Great Ideas’ page in our shared drive. Please add your own to share with the team!