USE MOVIE TRAILERS TO TEACH ENGLISH

Using movies and movie segments is great for teaching English and it’s also a good way to encourage students to start watching movies on their own. One of the challenges we face, however, is how to choose the appropriate movie or movie segment. Many times a short scene from a movie, without any context, may be difficult to understand.

A couple of years ago, at a BRAZ-TESOL congress, I learned with André Botelho and Carolina Stancati to use movie trailers in the English class. This is a very good idea because movie trailers are always short and pretty easy to understand. Since they are short, you can watch them many times. They are usually good, because they usually show the best scenes of the movie. Even when the movie is bad, the trailer is usually good.

Watching movie trailers is good, because you can have an idea of the movie plot and you can also learn a lot of movie vocabulary.

You can find movie trailers on youtube by writing movie trailers in the search box. Here are just a few examples:

Django Unchained

Iron Man 3

Monsters University

The Great Gatsby

Les Misérables

Encourage your students to watch movie trailers. You can prepare lots of activities about them. You can ask them to tell you the story of the movie. You can ask them to predict what happens in the story. You can ask them about the cast and crew of the movie. You can ask them if they would like to see the movie or not and why. Just use your creativity and you’ll have a lot of material to work on.

Another great advantage of using movie trailers is that there is always something new and there is great variety so it is easier to find something that your students will like.

Carlos Gontow is an English teacher, actor and teacher trainer. He has had about 25 years of experience teaching children, teenagers and adults. He’s involved with teaching English through theater, games and songs. He’s the author of the books “The Classroom is a Stage – 40 Short Plays for English Students” and “101 Dicas Para Você Aprender Inglês Com Sucesso,” both published by DISAL. He’s also the author of the blog “Dicas Para Aprender Inglês”

https://dicasingles.wordpress.com

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