What Effects Does the Use of Movies Have on English Classes?

What Effects Does the Use of Movies Have on English Classes?
－A Case Study in a Junior High School－
Division in English Education 2512034
NISHIMURA Misato
Abstract
There are increasing number of teachers, such as Kobayashi (2003), Sugiyama (2010),
Mukai (2008), and Kadoyama (2008), who have conducted English lessons using movies
and proposed their methods. Despite the number of studies which show various use of
movies in English lessons, most of them are for learners in higher education such as lessons
at universities and high schools, and only a few of them concern using movies in lessons at
junior high schools or for such beginner-level learners. Therefore, it is necessary to
consider how to design lessons to use movies effectively for any learners.
There are two main purposes for this study: to investigate whether junior high school
students positively perceive the use of a movie in English lessons, and what kind of
approach has more positive effects on students. From these purposes, the following
research questions were explored:
(1) Does the use of movies bring any changes on students' attitudes in English classes?
(2) Does the result have any differences in the way of using movies: using a movie at a
short time in several lessons, or at a long time in a single lesson?
The first group of students had a special lesson with four activities using a movie, taking
30 minutes long. The second group had five times of short lessons with two activities using a
movie before the textbook-based lesson, each of them taking 15 minutes. The third group
had both types of lessons. Before and after conducting all the lessons, questionnaires were
conducted in order to investigate whether there are any differences among the three groups.
The results showed little difference in participants’ perspectives between the three
despite the contrast between the ways of using a movie in the classes. It is considered that the
procedure of the lessons were not efficient to make significant difference between the three
groups. There are limitations related to the target groups and the period of the experiment.
The activities had to be arranged for junior high school students, especially for students who
do not have high motivation to learn English.
This study only introduced two ways of using a movie in English classes. However, it is
certain that using a movie has a power to involve students in the target language, which can
be a good starting point for students to get used to the target language. Although the lesson
has much space to include more efficient and adequate activities, teachers should know any
materials have possibility to get students to engage themselves with the target language and
one of them is a movie.
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