[Daniela Soru]

In the previous Topic, Guidance on Choosing Films and Video, I selected the short film “Paperman”

Pre-viewing:
I’ve thought of a language-based goal, so at this stage I’ll show the students a screenshot from the beginning scenes where we see both characters standing next to each other. I want students to write down as many adjectives as they can remember to describe and define the young man and the young woman, both physically and psychologically or relating to their job. (It’s a sort of prediction process)

while-viewing : I would use some pronominal questions for students to check some of their predictions as regards job and personality in the pre-viewing task, and I would add some Where – When – How – questions to help them follow the actions. I’d add some true/false sentence to focus on sound effects (there’s one point when we hear a phone ringing for example).

post-viewing: a writing task in which students have to write the dialogue between the young man and the young woman once they meet at the end: the dialogue may include self-descriptions, expressing feelings and wishes of the two characters according to the narrative.

[Daniela Soru]

It is really difficult to choose one short films among the rich and lovely selection we had during this course. During our webinars I was very positively impressed by the short film “Paperman”.

I’d like to use it for my students in the second class (15 years old); so the target will be teenagers with a A2 level of English who need to improve communication skills.

Considering:

language: it is a silent film so the cognitive load won’t be high from the linguistic point of view, but animation and graphic devices, including music are really expressive.

length: it’s a bit longer than 5 minutes but considering the absence of scripts and dialogues, the high expressiveness of the short, I think it won’t be difficult for the students to stay focused, and it won’t be too demanding. In an hour lesson we’ll have time to view the video at least three times without difficult, if I’m well organised and prepared.

relevance and interest: when we watched the short we mentioned the possibility to exploit the video to use/practise/revise the vocabulary and expressions used to describe people. Now, since my students studied this language area last year (in their first year) I would like to use this short to plan a sort of bridge lesson from last year to this year, so they can revise, reinforce their knowledge of vocabulary and their skills to ask about and talk about people’s physical aspect and personality.

task potential: I’d like to create tasks aimed at reinforcing students’ communicative skills and I think that working with “Paperman” will allow me to let my students do all the speaking and all the writing, the visual content will be perfect as communication prompt.

[Daniela Soru]

Do you think it could work with your students?

In my opinion, the framework is really helpful for us teachers need to have a simple and solid plan to carry out our activities in a tidy way, and this is appreciated by the students. I see that many times students don’t clearly understand the assignment or do not respect the order, so it is very useful to work with such a framework that I think could be shared with the students.
Students may use it as a check-list as they go on with the project. So they make sure they do not miss any of the steps.

Can you foresee any problems?
I cannot force any particular problems, but probably once we try it out with a specific class we might discover that some adjustments could be made. I think that it is vital to make it clear from the start with the students, that the teacher is going to evaluate the project considering all the elements listed in stage 7. So we could specify those evaluation criteria and give them to the students from the beginning when we present the project.

Something difficult could be to make sure that the students use English as a vehicular language as they make the film: they tend to shift to Italian when speaking to each other and this is something we should work on.

How would you adapt this framework so it could be used in online classes?

If this activity had to be carried out through distance-learning, it would be necessary for certain stages to exploit the video-conference separate rooms so that the teacher can support and monitor groups of students effectively. This means that step 1 for example could be done in an online lesson that is divided in a collective session (including all students) and a separate session with small groups into different “rooms” (in my school we use Microsoft Teams and it has rooms) where the teacher can access.

[Daniela Soru]

Which ones could you use with your students?

The activities are all very good and definitely worth trying! I’d use the “film review” and the “how to” video probably with the higher levels, while I think that the “five-second film”, and the “one- minute film” are perfect also for the “biennio”, and I mean A2 level of English, students aged from 14 to 16 more or less. The one-minute film activity is really interesting to accompany the learning of vocabulary to talk about personal interest, describing people you know/like, and I think it may be adapted in the sense that students may choose to talk about their favourite singer, or footballer, or any other inspirational famous person they follow.

Which ones are your personal favourites? Why?

I definitely liked the idea of “filming a dialogue” activity: I’d like to try it with my students, as acting is an important way to express feelings and usually very amusing as well. At least, I’ve always enjoyed it since my school years. It’s also a way to foster empathy, why not? And I also liked the idea of going further and letting the students invent a dialogue on a specific situation.

Thanks for these activities, really interesting!

[Daniela Soru]

Have you used any of these new short film and video genres with your students?

Everything in this topic 7 was quite new to me from a didactic point of view. I didn’t think that all these new kinds of short films and videos (many of which circulate on the social networks) could be exploited in the language lesson.
But there is one video that I usually show to my students on Women’s Day, and it can be classified as an Infographic Short. It explored the numbers and highlighted the connection between education and health preservation for girls in poor countries, especially dealing with the AIDS problem. I must say it was appealing and interesting for the students and I used it as a discussion prompt.

Which genres do you think would be most popular?

I think Music Shorts could be really popular, and maybe some more time could be dedicated to singing or playing if the students show they like singing or if someone in the class plays any musical instrument. I think songs are a big help in memorising new chunks of language, new vocabulary and improve pronunciation a lot.

Branded shorts would be particularly suitable for my students of Graphic Design, as I mentioned before, as they also study advertising.

Social shorts could be very interesting as well and allow the students to discuss and write about some important social issues.

[Daniela Soru]

Which of the activities using short films and videos to teach vocabulary do you think your students would like?

As regards the vocabulary activities, I think my students would like n° 1: noticing who is the character saying that word or expression. I think in the case of longer expressions it might be structured also as a pre-viewing activity where we introduce characters and students might guess. Then, as they watch the movie they confirm or verify their guessing. Of course this probably makes sense only with some kinds of short films or vocabulary we want to focus on.

I thinks they might also like the activity n°3: listening for words/expressions to match the definitions. I think that this is similar to finding collocations, as far as there is a sort of completing exercise that they might like. We could provide a worksheet to structure the activity better also from a visual point of view.

I would also like to experiment the Venn diagram: I think this would be very useful when practicing or reinforcing vocabulary (adjectives) to describe people’s aspect or personality.

I’ve never used any other activities with short films and videos to teach vocabulary, but I’ll do more of it in the coming school year.

[Daniela Soru]

What is it about the short films and videos showcased in the text which makes them good for fostering empathy? Think about camera shots, colour, music, and dialogue.

In my opinion, the first aspect that makes these short films good for fostering empathy is their theme. If poverty or illiteracy may be problems that my students are not so close to, camera shots, very gradual development of the actions, music crescendos help the viewers enter the story slowly and understand the meaning of it while imagining how it feels to be in that situation. On the other hand, themes like disability, bullying and homophobia are themes that are very close to our students’ experience, either directly or indirectly, and as you pointed out they are shamefully neglected themes.
THey’re important aspects of our lives and textbooks are so ordinary that they’ve ended up being unrealistic. That’s probably one of the reasons why school language is sometimes too far from teenagers’ language and lifestyle.

The focus given by specific camera shots, the music and colours (for example in “The Alphabet of Illiteracy”) are all used as devices that can let the viewers “enter” into and feel the story.

[Daniela Soru]

Did you enjoy the films and videos? – Yes, I did! Probably the one I found less “enjoyable” and probably would work less with my students is “Wisdom”. But not because the theme is not interesting, just because I think the dialogues are a bit more difficult to follow, there are no scripts or subtitles, so I see this short film as more suitable for adult learners at a higher level maybe.

Are the values presented in the films and videos important in the culture of your teaching context?
– Yes, those values are really important but at the same time they have been quite neglected so far in high schools especially. Some of these short films would be good also as lessons in “Educazione Civica”, that is to say a subject we may call “civic literacy”: it has been re-introduced in Italy in 2020, as a compulsory subject to be taught by all teachers of different subjects. We must teach at least one hour Educazione Civica in each class per week, for a total of 33 hours a year and we must deal with themes that range from law and constitution, civil rights, solidarity, ecology, environment, etc. These videos could provide perfect material for an English lesson of “Educazione Civica”. Especially “Kindness” and “Saving Grace”.

Are there any short films related to values that have worked well with your students?

I want to say here that my favourite one was definitely “Saving Grace”: the music is top! It’s appealing and involving; the scripts are numerous and really helpful to follow the meaning and they make the cognitive-linguistic load much lighter. I think this would work just perfect with my students. It would be a nice way to start a solidarity event, let’s say before Christmas, leading the students to know more about Mary’s Meals and to donate money to this charity. I think students really appreciate when they feel they can do something, to make a difference. This video inspired me in this direction.

[Daniela Soru]

Hi everyone!

1) Which of the activities in the text do you like most? Why?

My favorite ones were “intriguing title”; “empathizing with the character”. The first one because it stimulates creativity and probably will be a chance to show the students that they can write many things in English when given a stimulating prompt. I think they do not like writing a lot (I didn’t like writing tasks as a student myself) because the tasks we normally give are not so intriguing! The second one struck me especially in the letter-writing activity: I think it is an original way to help students explore and express their feelings ant also understanding other people’s feelings imagining what they would do in their shoes.

2) Which of the activities could you use with your students?

I think that the “intriguing title” and the “stills story” are very adaptable and useful to be done at school.

3) Have you used short films and videos as writing prompts before? Did your students enjoy them? Have you used any other writing activities inspired by short films or videos?
I must admit that I have never used short films as writing prompts so all this is new to me!

[Daniela Soru]

Hello everyone,

The activities were so many and varied, I think they all have wonderful potential to be used with our students, depending on the skills we want to reinforce, also. There is a lot of input for writing to be done at school or as a homework and this is great.

1)Which activities did you like the most? Why?
I liked the description of the “Memory Game”, because it makes me predict that students are probably going to take as a funny challenge, trying to remember as many details as possible.
“Moving Music” is also one of my favourites as long as it will help teachers and students to find a way to learn how to express emotions and describe them. This is one of the key-competences they should acquire but it is not usually so easy to practice it in our ordinary lessons.
“What happens next” is also an appealing activity, because I think it gives the possibility to exercise with imagination, creativity and writing a story. Many original results and predictions may come from the students and I think this will be stimulating.

2) Could you use any of these activities with your students?

I think they are all very easy to use in my school with little tools required: the IWB is enough as an equipment to play the films.

3) Have you already used silent short films with your students? What was your experience like?

Very rarely, but both the students and I enjoyed the activity with the short film: I did the same in different classes and the outcome tended to be always different: this is something important also from a professional point of view: we as teachers can never get bored with this kind of lesson.

4) Are there any other activities you’ve used with silent short films that have worked well?
I had used your activity based on “The Conditioned”, which was based on the use of pictures taken from the short film, and it was a good experience for me and the students enjoyed it! Many of them were really surprised and struck by the story.

[Daniela Soru]

Sorry I only posted the answer to question 1! Now, as regards the activity sheets we had to analyze:

1) short film viewing guide: very helpful and well-structured according to the three phases of pre-viewing, while-viewing, and post-viewing. The while viewing is very important and useful for me, as I usually struggle to create activities that can help the students stay focused on the film they’re watching. It’s a good worksheet also because it’s adaptable: we may select some questions of the after-viewing phase that are especially suitable according to our students and our classes

2) Video ads activity sheet: I find this helpful, very very flexible so there is space for adaptation, but also very interesting as ads may have an endless number of details and second meanings and nuances that our students may analyse and discover. I really liked this one, and I can’t wait to experiment it…

3) Setting Activity Sheet: I’ve had some problems in downloading this activity sheet, so by the moment I cannot comment on it, but I’ll have a look at it as soon as I succeed in the download!

4) Sound grid activity sheet: This is extremely convenient, very quick and easy to prepare for us teachers. It leaves room for letting the students free to observe any detail: we could play a group game where the winner is the group who collected more details, or more adjectives to describe the four elements. I mean, there is space for creativity and a little bit of improvising may be. Taking notes is also an ability that my students need to acquire so, why not?

5) Sound activity sheet: I am curious to try and see the difference (or not) between the students’ predictions and their reaction when watching the short film with both sound and picture. I think this is really engaging for the students, they’ll get involved and I find this worksheet enjoyable.

[Daniela Soru]

I definitely agree with the benefits underlined and I must admit that I had never thought that short films could have all these pros. I may add, from my perspective as a teacher working in class with students with very different levels, sometimes with specific learning disorders, that short films could be particularly effective and give a sense of completeness both to the teacher and to the students, especially when dealing with disorders that imply difficulty in keeping the attention high for a long time. This is the case for more and more teenagers nowadays even when there isn’t any specific disorder: keeping their attention high is not an easy task so short movies could be just perfect. The sense of achievement and of completeness is important, I think students need to say at the end of the day “Today we did this” rather than today “we started” to see this….

[Daniela Soru]

Hi everyone! I am back and trying to catch up on everything I left behind….

I think that an Extensive Viewing Programme at my institution, which is a public school where lessons start at 8:30 and finish at maximum 2:30 pm, could be best introduced through an experimental project to be done in the afternoons.
What would the benefits of the programme be? – This would be an enrichment for what we call “offerta formativa” of our school, that is this would add a new way of learning foreign language (English) in an innovative way. Also, this would allow students to reinforce their skills with English and spend more time at school doing something enjoyable and at the same time educational.
How would students benefit? – The students could play an active role in such a programme, as the final work for examples requires them to provide a very personal and multi-modal response to the film. Discussion questions would provide the students with an occasion to confront and compare their perspectives and their beliefs on some specific themes, or social problems, with their mates. This would enrich their critical thinking abilities, their debating abilities and open their minds, of course while practising English.
How would teachers benefit? – Teachers would benefit from a more authentic and original kind of teaching activity, I think this kind of teaching would be much more rewarding than simply teaching grammar structures or reading and translating dialogues and making efforts on trying to involve their students. Moreover, this project could be done through a CLIL project, for example we could involve the History colleague and watch movies set in a specific historical time, so that both disciplines could be involved. In my school, where audio and visual techniques are the core subjects of the course I teach in, I could involve in the project my colleague of “Laboratory tecnici”: this is a subject where students learn to make and edit photo and video materials: that would be perfect.

How would the institution benefit? – The Institution could boast the experimentation of an innovative method of teaching and also a new strategy to stop (or at least try) school abandoning, which is a really serious issue in my territory. My headteacher would be enthusiastic I think, as she is very sensitive to the question of learning English and promoting innovative teaching strategies.

Can you foresee any obstacles you might have to overcome?
I think this could be done with little money and little resources, probably the difficulty could be given by the fact that many students would have some difficulties in spending time at school in the afternoon: my school is in a small town, but most of the students come from the nearby villages, sometimes from the countryside: there are not many buses in the afternoons to make it easy for them to move freely. This is probably the main obstacle and the difficulty to convince students to spend more time at school in the first attempt. I think if they try it, this would be a very significant socializing experience, and they need it a lot!

[Daniela Soru]

First of all, I am sorry to say I could not analyze very deeply the two viewing guides. Despite being on holidays, I find managing time quite difficult and I have quite a few things to catch up. So I focussed on the viewing guide for “The King’s Speech”.

Generally speaking, as Gail pointed out above, this is an amazing amount of details and materials ready for work and as I went on browsing the viewing guides I was wondering how much work did it take you to elaborate all these sheets. That is wonderful!

In each guide there is a lot of material and tasks to be done by students, so I also think that as teachers we might select some questions of each section, or maybe we could leave some sections out, depending on the class, on our students needs, etc. I also thought that some sections are perfect to be done at home, so as a homework, both as an individual or as a small-group task (we need so much group working and we’ve done almost nothing in the last two years!).

Others sections could be best done in class, with us teachers giving more guidance and more support.

Among the viewing guides I was attracted by “The King’s Speech”, for many reasons: I liked that particular film, I like historical movies, I love British movies and I’ve recently developed a (good) obsession for movies, series, documentaries, dealing with the royal family. I was taught in my pre-service studies that dealing with subjects we’re keen on, is very profitable also for our students, because they can perceive our passion, our involvement in the things we are teaching.

As regards pre-viewing questions, I find them engaging because they require the “self” involvement, so they are also very personal. I would certainly do this at school. We may build up a discussion.
As regards the glossary, I would start the analysis at school but assign the rest to do at home, I find that vocabulary learning is a typically individual task to concentrate on.

“What do you know about the British monarchy?”
“What are the arguments in favour and against monarchies?”

I usually deal with this theme in my classes, comparing British Constitutional Monarchy and the Italian Constitution, so they might have some background when I present such an activity.
What other films have you seen about the British monarchy?
Considering the success of the series “The CROWN” and my recommendations, some of my students may have seen at least that series. The topic is also quite popular and covered by the media. 


“What do you know about speech impediments? How do they affect people? How are they treated?”
I think this question might be too general and I think the students will need an explanation of the fact that the king had stammering. so, it would be useful to read the synopsis first.

“The film is set in London in the 1930s and includes the lives of royalty and ordinary people. What are your expectations of how it will look, particularly the production design, costume and lighting?”
A good question to predict the historical characteristics of the film and their ability to recognize social status according to costumes and clothing in general.


As regards the post-viewing questions I would assign some of them, to be done as a writing task. Then as a personal response to the film I’d assign the multimodal review, that implies the use of many competences, non only linguistic, but also digital, etc. Also, for my older students I like the idea of a video review.

[Daniela Soru]

1) Settig: Where does the action take place? How quickly are we able to establish this?

-The action takes place in a dining room of a family house. It is evident from the very start of the scene as there are all the elements: a table, with an elegant table cloth, plates, cutlery, candles, glasses, jug of water, etc. And people are sitting and eating at a table. It is clear that it’s a house, because we see a window with curtains an a door from where the girl enters the dining room to join her family for dinner.

2) Sound: What type of music is there in the film? What effects does the music have?

– The background music is quite soft, and relaxing, it is a sort of slow swing, a lounge soft music, that turns into a more classical sound with violin playing in the very end of the scene. The effect it gives to the scene is to create a contrast, to express contradiction: in fact while the atmosphere may seem relaxed and elegant, there is actually a strong argument going on and strong language been used between the couple.

3) Characters: How would you describe the dynamic between the main characters? What did they think of one another?

– The main character, husband and wife, are having a strong argument, there is verbal aggressiveness, screaming and some violent reactions from the man. All these elements show that there is conflict between the two, and this conflict is just bursting out in this scene. The woman does not show much appreciation for her husband, while the husband is trying to get more respect from her wife. He seems to be trying to assert his virility, his power as husband and father. They don’t like each other. This is quite evident.

4) Composition: What does the main actor’s gestures tell us about the personality of his character?

– The man’s gestures are very assertive, showing authority and power. His voice and his body language proceed according to an increasing intensity, reaching a climax in the moment when he throws the plate of asparagus onto the wall, out of any patience or calm. All his gestures tell us that he’s quite neurotic and he’s very likely aggressive and probably violent.

I think the framework is really effective: I’ve just seen how, if we choose the right questions for our students, the framework can be adapted even to a short scene of an entire movie. Another very interesting aspect is the fact that we can select specific questions according to the aspects, themes, issues, language, etc. we want our students to focus on.

It is really helpful and I think it gives both teachers and students a good structured activity, easy and clearer to tackle.

[Author]

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