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

[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】 近年来随着科技的和素质越来越受社会的重视，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。
【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 ing’ 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]
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.
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:
    (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.
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.
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.

4. Some points worthy of attention in teaching through videos
4.1 The teacher’s role and requirement
In order to have an efficient video class, we should well know the teacher’s role first. Because whether the students can achieve a good memory and high efficiency of what they have learned depends on the scientific design and careful implementation, without them the gain cannot be satisfactorily obtained. The teacher is an organizer, controller, participant, facilitator and evaluators as well as researcher or investigator, he /she plays a very important role in video class. [15] So the teacher’s main responsibility is to design tasks that can be carried out in class. Before the activity the teacher should give instruction clearly and concisely. In order to make the activity run smoothly and efficiently, the teacher also has to control the pace. During the role-play, the teacher can join one or two groups as an ordinary participant. As far as the video is concerned the teacher should help students by designing handouts and guiding them to watch. “According to Harmer (1997:237), as an assessor or evaluator, the teacher does two things that are correcting mistakes and organizing feedback. Harmer insists that correcting should be gentle.”, “Organizing feedback is an effective way to assess student’s performances so that they see how well they are doing.” [16] Here the teacher should focus on student’s success or progress so that a success-oriented learning atmosphere can be created. What’s more, surveys and interviews are indispensable steps for the teacher. Through the research or investigation, the teacher can get to know the perception of his /her students about videos, what activities they like much and what videos are their favorites. Then the teacher will adopt the material and teaching method according to the need and interests of students. By these ways his/her teaching will be more motivating and effective.
In a word, in video course teacher’s role is not only on playing the films but also on transmitting this material in to students’ real acquired experience.
4.2 Criteria for video option
Films are available on VCD, DVD, tape, disc or TV. There are also many kinds of films, comedy, tragedy, science fiction, thriller, documentary, etc. Although there are various kinds of video materials, few can be adopted as teaching and learning material in a video course, and what kind of films is suitable for a video course is the key question for teachers. Selecting a suitable film is very important for a teacher to organize a good class, teachers should be careful in choosing films to use in video courses. Teachers should apply different methods to design some activities in different types of films. For example, documentaries often include large information such as news, commentary, and the development of them is always based on an event. When watching this kind of film, the teacher should lead students’ attention on what, who, where, when, how, why questions on the film. [17]
The video materials’ selection is significant in English teaching and learning, but the same material cannot meet the whole students’ need. What’s more, they are in different levels and abilities. Look at following table:  
               The Students’ Perceptions of the Selection of Films [18]
Items A B C D E
1 28.67% 8.29% 15% 28.71% 18.33%
2 11.25% 18.85% 28.75% 5% 37.15%
3 5% 18.75% 37.5% 5% 27.5%
4 0% 5% 42.64% 33.62% 18.7%
5 2.5% 11.25% 13.75% 60% 12.5%
6 3.75% 38.93% 38.57% 10% 8.75%
(See Appendix1 for the wording of the items)
Item1 in table displays the learners’ perceptions or opinions of the selection of films. Nearly 30% learners like films about love; also nearly 30% learners like watching videos about life. Only nearly 9% learners like watching videos about war. This indicates that most learners love life and treasure the most beautiful affection. When they watch videos, they want to be in a relaxing stage. Item2 in table show that nearly 40% of learners prefer that the film be connected with what they have learned. It suggests that the learners want to decode the plots using their existing knowledge and prior experience. It also illustrates nearly 30% of learners like to watch films that are thought provoking. This indicates that students like thinking about life, the theme and value of viewers’ thinking and imagination. Item3 in table shows that nearly 40% learners prefer the ideological content within their understanding. As is shows in Item4 in table, 42.64% learners prefer that the selection of films should be of variety. This maybe shows that learners want to enrich their knowledge since authentic materials are clear and essential source and an important trigger of comprehensible output as well. As is illustrated in Item5 in table, 60% learners prefer videos/films a little above their linguistic competence. If a video is too difficult or easy, then the language acquisition will not occur spontaneously.
From the above analyses we can get some principles of selecting a suitable film for teaching and learning. First, films chosen for video course should be based on the students’ interests and also helpful for learning and teaching rather than entertainment. They must be good for teaching purpose, for example, to provide an opportunity for students to improve their ing or speaking ability. If students are especially weak in picking up daily conversations, it is better that the film should include enough dialogues. In addition, the film shouldn’t be too easy or too hard for students according to students’ different levels of proficiency of English. If the film is too easy, the advanced students can benefit little from it. On the contrary, the elementary students will probably lose interest in it if the film is too difficult to understand. Last but not least, young people can be easily influenced by movies. The films worldwide are both good and bad, so teachers should consider the ideological content of films. Teachers should be patient and careful enough to choose films. If the film is consisted of violence or sex, etc, it is a bad source for teaching and learning.
4.3 Time arrangement
Another problem for teachers is time arrangement. As for the duration of the video, Item6 in table shows that “the length of a video should be between one and half hours and two hours. It will appear to students’ psychological characteristics as far as their span of attention is concerned.”[19] Normally, it takes 2 to 3 hours to finish playing a whole film, so we need at least 4-class time (45 minutes per class). However, as we have many activities designed to conduct during each stage, it is essential to arrange time as reasonable as possible. It requires teachers’ full preparation before video course and puts time arrangement into consideration. In addition, a film is divided into several class-times to finish, so when it is to be continued, students should memorize the scene of the film played in previous classes. Therefore, how to properly arrange time not only depends on the performance of students and teachers, but also depends on how much time the film takes. In this perspective of time, we’d better not choose those films which take too long to finish.

5. Some methods and activities to be used in video course
The book English Through Movies intends to help learners go through the journey of learning English through movies in 4 stages. It has 4 units. Each unit is a movie. There are 4 parts in every unit. Part one: understanding of the movie, which includes the cultural background of the movie, the genre of the movie and the summary of the movie. Part two: close study of the movie, which contains excerpts from the movie. Part three: reflection of the movie, which includes recordings of interview. Part four: act out the movie. [20] Learning from the design of this book, we know something must be done before we start a video course. On one hand, we can conduct a questionnaire to know students’ specific needs. Questions can be raised in the questionnaire like this: Do they really like watching a movie in class? If they do, in what ways can it motivate students? On the other hand, teachers should check up whether the teaching facilities are available or not. A film class needs certain facilities like a TV set, a videocassette recorder (VCR) or a videodisc player, videotapes or discs. Now, it is time to consider how to fully use films to teach. There are three stages for preparing and teaching a video course.
5.1 Pre-watching [21]
The first stage is preparation. Both teachers and students should well prepare. For the part of teachers, all the equipments and other facilities should be checked to be in a good state. Teachers also need to get all the teaching materials (the textbook, pictures, or poster etc.) prepared to help students get to know anything about the movie. Then teachers can design some exercises to be presented and activities to be worked out in class. As for students, they should read the reference materials or they can look for other related materials to understand the film better.
Pre-watching activities:
If the students have already known something about the film, they will not be so tense, so activities also should not be neglected in pre-watching stage. They can be designed as following:
(1) Introduce the topic and cultural background of the video.
(2) Vocabulary guessing: Give students a list of words and let them guess which word will be appeared in what context. If there are some words they don’t know, ask them to look up in a dictionary immediately or turn to the teacher for help.
(3) Set one or two general questions to meet the main content points in the film.
(4) Discussion: Discuss what the film will be about according to the title of the film.
These activities serve as a warming-up exercise before watching the movie. It is a good previewing activity for different levels of students in class, and it aims to help students have a better understanding of the film.
5.2 While-watching [22]
The second stage is watching the film. When students have a basic idea of the film, it is time to view the movie. The film can be played twice or more to strengthen their impression of the movie. Students watch the film straight through at the first time to strengthen their understanding from their preparation. The second time, teachers only choose certain episode of the film. During this process, teachers can suddenly stop and ask students to do the exercise given in advance. As for the third time or more, students can completely appreciate the film without any exercises.
While-watching activities: (the first time)
(1) Gap-filling.
Provide some key sentences and paragraphs based on the video with blanks. This exercise requires students remember key words, slang, phrases or important information to fill the gaps. This activity can be easy for some advanced students. However, it can help those elementary and intermediate students to practice their spoken English.
(2) Multiple-choice
List words with four explanations. Among these explanations, certain or all could be possible for answers. Students are asked to choose those, which are fit to the meaning appears in the video.
(3) True or false
Give students worksheets with some statements. Ask students to decide whether it is true or false according to the film (with information available in the video).
(4) Check the answers and give explanations as well.
In these activities, students are given a worksheet while viewing at the first time. This activity needs a little writing, so the film will not be interrupted.
While-watching activities: (the second time)
(1) Complete a sentence or a paragraph dictation.
When it comes to a sentence dictation, teachers play the disc twice. For the first time, students are asked to watch only. When playing the second time, students must write down what they have heard to complete the whole sentence. When it comes to a paragraph dictation, teachers play the video three times. For the first time, students must watch and listen only to get the general idea. For the second time, students take down the notes. The last time, students must write down the whole paragraph as much as possible based on the notes they’ve taken.
(2) Sound off
Play the video through once with the sound turned off. Ask students to watch the screen only to predict the verbal content of the film. This prediction may include who the characters are, what they are talking about, etc. [23]
(3) Play the video again and check the answers.
In these activities, teachers just choose a part of the film (3 to 4 minutes) and present it to the class. The purpose of a sentence or a paragraph is to help students focus on key words and phrases. It is particularly effective with both elementary and intermediate students. And the sound off exercise is to help students to use extra linguistic clues to understand what is being said.
5.3 Post-watching [24]
The final stage is the advanced stage. To have a comprehensive review of the advanced students, teachers must adopt various methods.
Post-watching activities:
(1) Group discussion
Students are divided into 4 or 5 groups, and then each group selects one leader to present their group members’ idea after discussion. Each group is given different tasks (such as the summary of the story, the comments on the film, the performance of the characters, etc). When the discussion is over, every representative of each group is asked to share and exchange their ideas to the whole class.
(2) Role playing
When students have a clear understanding of the presentation, teachers select certain part of the scene, and ask students to act out in front of class by using as much of the original version as they can remember.
(3) Writing
Ask students to write a short summary or comments on any issues or characters they like in the film. These activities aim to check whether students have understood the film and also provide feedbacks to teachers. From this stage, teachers can see where still needs to be improved.

6. Conclusion
English teaching and learning through films has both positive and negative parts, in terms of providing material source. Compared to other media, it’s ultimately good for conducting classroom activity, practicing students’ speaking and listening ability, etc. Even though there are also many methods proved to be efficient for English teaching and learning, videos are still worth trying to put into teaching practice. Apart from its advantages introduced above, video itself has its own characteristics, which combine nature and society, culture and history, science and art, religion and morality, dream and reality. Although its advantages outweigh its disadvantages, we still should be aware of its limitations during teaching. We also have suggested some activities in each stage, it is obvious that activities aim to help students have a better understanding of the film; however, they still need to be improved as more and more video courses are put into practice. The video class makes language teaching more attractive and interesting, and it requires both the effort of teachers and students.

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