A Little Action Research that Suprised Me
Like many teachers who have a very limited or no resource budget, innovation with free or nearly free resources is a must to keep sanity and student interest. So back in late September I stumbled upon A.J. Hodge's Learn English with Movies. I was both intrigued and skeptical, as this is general bit advice I always see in ESL books, but from my experience though it's fun to watch movies, there really doesn't seem to be much of an effect in terms of student retention or English language skills gained.
However, I was surprised by this video, as he discussed the concept from a much different approach and focus of using movies as a learning tool for English Language acquisition. And decided to put I the concept into my tool kit.
After my third week on the project, I had my groups and students sorted out and had introduced some blended learning to help cover student resource gaps and provide useful learning experiences. Though most of my students were happily engage in the new format and material, I still had 2 groups (8 and 11 students in each group respectively) of pre-intermediate students who had excellent grammar and vocabulary knowledge but struggled with pronunciation and speaking. Factors for this included confidence issues, no prior exposure to communicative teaching/learning or found the material not very motivating. So, armed with a couple seasons of Friends, I decided to try out A.J. Hodge's method. Admittedly, the first week was a bit challenging, as the student's wanted to "watch" the whole episode and did not want to engage in it as a learning activity. However by the second and third week they began to warm to the process (especially as the sessions were 20-25 minutes (4 times a week) and they had exams and other things in their lives equally or even more important than learning English). Though some students adapted the process early on the majority took until the end of the third week. By the fourth week, they were all fully engaged in the process and I really began to notice subtle to moderate positive changes in their pronunciation, levels of confidence, levels of fluency. We are now in the fifth week, and seven of the students have begun to do this activity at home as means to continue to improve their speaking/listening skills or to help younger siblings learn English.
Though I am still a bit skeptical of the program (Effortless English), it does seem to have merit with some effort on the part of the teacher and focused engagement of the students.
Link to A.J. Hodge's Effortless English episode "Learn English with Movies"