Idea #4

© Steve Harwood via Flickr

The idea is certainly not new: if you google teaching language/culture through movies, you will find an impressive list of academic articles and whole books on the matter. I am a big fan of cinematography, and it was about time for me to start a movie club, or something like that. So, a friend and I come up with the Friday Movie Club idea - for the students, with the focus on providing more cultural exposure through film. 

Teaching culture was always a hot topic in SLA, since there are so many definitions and components of the concept. My understanding of culture has much to do with the Gibson's Cultural Iceberg Model (2002) that includes obvious things, such as food, holiday customs, dress (about 10%) and more complex, hidden things like values, assumptions, notions of "self", etc. (about 90%). You can learn more about this perspective on cultural competence in Gibson's "Intercultural Business Communication".  

According to Gibson, intercultural communication is not an easy skill to master. Movies seem to be a perfect solution, since they are usually very rich in culture (just observing how two people share a dinner can probably provide more cutural information, than a whole book). Students get to watch people in a wide variety of contexts and learn a lot over a relatively short period of time. 

The logical question here is why to organize a club out of something that students normally do anyways at home? Students love movies, they don't really need us for that. Well... We noticed that students either watch the American movies with the Russian subtitles (and, therefore, missing out on the rich cultural load that the actual Russian movies provide) or watch whatever cinematography they find on Netflix/YouTube/online, which does not guarantee qualitative experience. That is why we decided to take it under control (sort of) and started showing one carefully selected Russian movie every Friday after classes. 

So far we have been running our Friday Movie Club for a month, and that is what we learned:

1. Reminders! There should be multiple reminders in all kinds of formats (posters, flyers, emails) to gently navigate the perspective audience to the right location. Students do forget what is good for them :)

2. Snacks help. We try to have some typical Russian snacks around (кукурузные палочки, for example) to attract hungry tired spectators and compliment the experience with an authentic touch.

3. Subtitles in a target language is a must. Although it's virtually impossible to find a Russian movie with the Russian subtitles, it's mush more engaging for students to watch movies this way. 

4. Feedback. We thought we know everything about our students' preferences and picked action and triller movies for the first two weeks. Then, we decided to ask students' opinion and found out (to our big surprise) that our audience loves romantic comedies! 

5. Timing and complexity. Long movies in a foreign language (or very complex ones) are just too much. We try to select light and funny films with a lot of details of everyday life and a grasping dynamic visual.

Ideally, we would like to have an after-movie discussion and ask simple questions, such as: What was you favorite character and why? What unusual or interesting details did you notice in people's everyday lives: apartments' layout, restaurant etiquette/ transportation? What moments of the movie did you like the most?

But, honestly, right now our movie club members are just too exhausted to stay for a discussion after a long day in school + a movie. It might be a good idea to run such a club on a weekend!

Happy watching and happy teaching!

P.S.: If you are interested in language teaching through movies, the Berkley Learning Center (BLC) has a large collection of film clips (BLC Library of Foreign Language Film Clips) that is solely meant for language instruction. The access is free, but your institution has to sign a contract with BLC. Here is a workshop, where the BLC Associate Director Mark Kaiser explains how the library works.