Читать книгу Short Films in Language Teaching - Группа авторов - Страница 9

Why should we employ short films in our classrooms? A circular and tautological answer would be because they are short and audiovisual.

Apart from the general benefits of using films in TEFL such as popularity, motivation audio-visual appeal, authenticity, personal relevance and teachers’ preferences (Stempleski/Tomalin 2001, Thaler 2007a), short formats exhibit additional didactic assets:

 Time: Compared to long audiovisual formats, e.g. movies, and medium formats, e.g. sitcoms, short films can be comfortably dealt with in a 45-minute lesson including viewing and working phases.

 Repetition: Due to their brevity, double or even triple viewing is possible.

 Focus: Certain details like camera perspective, character development, leitmotif or central message can be studied in detail within a manageable context.

 Flexibility: The three time-saving approaches to presenting films, i.e. segment, sandwich, and appetizer approach, are dispensable as the very short format allows for a simple straight-through mode (cf. Thaler 2014). The working phases may be structured according to the PWP (pre – while – post), GTD (global to detail), TBLL (task-based language learning), 10-step listening-viewing approach, or MVC (7-code music video clip) patterns (Thaler 2012).

All these benefits are not hard to be detected in the famous 40-second Berlitz commercial called The German Coast Guard (Fig. 3, also see Thaler 2014).

Title	The German Coast Guard
Type	Commercial
Source	www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0lWICH3rY
Synopsis	In this hilarious Berlitz commercial, a young German coastguard is being given instructions in his new job by an elderly man. As soon as the experienced man leaves, the trainee receives a distress call from an English boat:»We are sinking!«After a pause the coastguard asks:»What are you sinking (thinking) about?«
Features	Brevity (40 sec)HumourPolyvalence
Learning potential	Pronunciation: problems with /th/Linguistics: minimal pairs »thinking / sinking«Grammar: present progressiveMediation: L1-L2 (first part)Speaking: sources of humourLingua franca: sea travelIntercultural learning: critical incidentsAdvertising: form, function and impact of a commercial

Fig. 3: The German Coast Guard

Moreover, not only media literacy / film literacy, but basically all competence domains and individual sub-competences that are postulated in the educational standards (KMK 2003, KMK 2012) can be fostered with the help of short films:

 Functional communicative competences ▶ particularly listening-viewing

 Intercultural communicative competence ▶ culture-specific references

 Text and media competence ▶ cinematic devices

 Language awareness ▶ sociolects, regiolects

 Language learning competence ▶ Extramural English with online platforms