Fantastic 4 was the biggest hit I've had so far. Lots of action and funny moments. They loved the characters. Very appropriate for middle school or high school.

Its my end of semester class next week and I wanted the students to watch something but the lesson is only 50 minutes long. I feel like a bit of a cheat just showing them 50 minutes of a film - I would find that frustrating if it were me and I was enjoying it, to only see half of a film.

So being British I had decided on playing Wallace and Gromit a close shave as its 30 minutes long and has time for discussion afterwards. I teach grade 1 at an all girls high school.

Has anyone tried Wallace and Gromit and if so what was the reaction? Im concerned my students wont get it or will find it boring/too young.

Any suggestions for something to fit in a 50 minute class would be great please!

If not then I'll give it a whirl on Monday and let you all know how it goes.

I feel the same way...I am also thinking of showing a 2o to 30 mins show and having time for discussion, the thing is it's end of semester and I can barely get them to play games, I am not so sure I can get them to discuss for 20 to 30 mins

WALL-E.

If they don't like it, then they're wrong, because it's the greatest film of all time.

step up is popular but a lil 2 sexy there r like 4 of them out 2

 

I just finished showing x-men First Class at my all boys high school. There are some girls in their underwear in some scenes, but the movie is rated PG-13, so I risked it. They loved it and so far no complaints from co-teachers. I suspect they show stuff way more risque.

I also showed the Hunger Games to some of my classes, which was met with equal excitement but has a better portrayal of women in my opinion. In gender segregated schools like this one where the guys don't get a lot of of social education around gender I think its important to keep these kinds of things in mind. Young and impressionable and all that.

i work at an all girls middle (4 yrs and runnin)

their fav movies in the past have been:

elf - great for holiday time
she's the man
legally blonde
school of rock

I think it's a good movie and I love it. My students - high school student - loved it, too.

  The best movie" NO movie". This is just another one of those things people use in the Education office to phase out for  English conversation classes with Native speakers

If you really have to show a movie make them read English subtitles. If they can't understand the subtitles in English they need to be studying more converstation based lessons.

I have to second Fishead's sentiments, and will even raise them one: Showing an English language movie with Korean subtitles is deleterious to their advancement in English.  Here they are, all prepped to associate narrative tension, emotional valence, visual and audio cues, and social context with vocabulary and syntax and WHAMM0 - their attention gets ripped away to fixate on Hangeul. So the Ss "learn" to disassociate and focus only on Korean.

The opposite, of course, is also true: If the Ss are immersed in the visual and audio clues and can catch up with enough of the narrative flow to suspend disbelief, all sorts of learning takes place, and the English subtitles there on the bottom (you can adjust the setting with JetAudio and make them bigger) reinforce the associations. The younger the better. Dumbo, Tarzan, and Rio, for example. The Hannah Montana movie crosses over well for the tweens, and though the HS students will usually use the promise of an English only movie to showcase their Hard-assed Han ennui,  you might be able to hook them with something like The Avengers movie, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and the Vampire's Assistant. TV shows like Smallville, The Carrie Diaries, Once Upon a Time and Teen Wolf can also be great -- the narrative hook there is more sustaining once set -- but could also be deemed a bit racy. The philosophy there is similar to that which underpins extensive reading. It's important not only that the teacher watch too, but watch actively, and that absolutely no talking between the students (trying to use the occasion for social hierarchy jockeying) be permitted.

Rowdie, it's the semiotic environment that determines the efficacy of the subtitles choice, and you're right, you can read it both ways. It is a pedagogical question, though, and within the parameters of what I would like to call the "code-switching" pedagogy, showing English language cultural products with Korean subtitles is definitely the way to go. Then you're not teaching English, per se, but showing students how to speak Korean using English noises. It's definitely a legit way to go, too, and everything about the national curriculum, the marketplace incentives for cultural products  in the respective languages, and the other market and institutional barriers to the free and easily available use of English, will point you and the students in that direction.   Go with the flow.

You mentioned French. I noticed, when I was studying French, that I could watch a French movie and kinda catch on to what was going down, and, so long as I got caught up in everything, my knowledge of the vocabulary helped me go with that flow. It all disappeared if I watched the movie with English subtitles, though. I read the subtitles, and my comprehension of the French was way reduced. Learning occurs on many levels, and on a very few levels some types of learning can occur with variant subtitles. But the meta-learning and rhythm-inducing levels, ahh, that takes parallel subtitles, or no subtitles. Then, too, I was watching the really good French sh-t, your Louis Malle and Goddard type of flic. If I was watching the kind of sh-t they show on TV over there, it might well be a different story, one that would throw me over to your camp. All that schmaltzy, entirely predictable sentimentality and cheesy macho drama would force me to yield and I'd be analyzing dem English words on da screen ta see how dey linked up wit da francaise.

It has something to do with age, attention spans, and social cues. At a certain age, children will watch anything of interest and try to puzzle out sense from what they find delightful. Movies like "Dumbo" and "Tarzan" that I mentioned in my post typify this aspect. They have a strong visual narrative that language only supplements. In a certain environment, children will take a strong interest in them, and learn the language as well.  If the Ss see the choice of which language the subtitles will be shown in as an opportunity to showcase their chauvinism, however, perhaps the battle was lost before it began. On the other hand, were "The Avengers" only available in English, they'd succumb.

As I mentioned in another post http://www.waygook.org/index.php/topic,6590.80.html, it's all about the EFL vs. the EIL, when it should be about the ELF (English as a Lingua Franca).