[Kieran]

Hi Emilie,

Thank you for your excellent response to the task.

1. Empathy has three components : cognitive (taking the perspective), affective (understanding the emotions) and the empathic one (the action being taken to help after taking the perspective and understanding the emotions of the other person). What we experienced as a child has a consequence on how much empathetic we are as adults. But the good news is that empathy is a potential we can develop.

This is a great summary of what empathy is!

Empathy enable us to live together ! I keep in mind the expression “universal solvent”.

Yes. ‘Universal solvent’ is a lovely way of expressing the importance of empathy.

We should all consciously choose this mindset (using empathy) to solve any kind of problem or difficulty. Without empathy, no democracy. How could you live together without trying to understand others’ perspective ?

Simon Baron-Cohen and david Howe both argue that without empathy democracy is impossible.

Empathy has declined. Three main reasons for this : less social activities, the use of tech and the competitive atmosphere (less time to pause and really listen).

Yes. These are the three main reasons given by the researchers for the decline in empathy

Personal note : (really) listening to somebody means being present for him. That’s a good start for empathy.

Yes. Being present would seem to be an absolute prerequesite to being empathic.

2. Completely. An empathetic mindset and will for action can be used by anybody (“universal”) and has a quick, effective, beneficial regenerative effects and ability to support healing, soothe and soften relationship (“balm”)

‘Solvent’ and ‘balm’ are really nice metaphors to describe how empathy works, aren’t they?

3. I was not aware that this could be more a generation problem (“students between 1980 and 2010”). Being French but living in Greece, I could say that there is a higher level of empathy among Greek people. Maybe due to that fact that people here are still engaged in social and community activities (from children to elderly).

I’m very interested to hear you say you think people in Greece are more empathic than people in France. As you point out, the involvement in community actvities may be the explanation.

In general, I feel that on a society and political level, there is less and less space for nuances in our debate. Debates are often tending towards the domination of a unique truth, whereas to my opinion, we should more appreciate the multiple truths and perspectives.

This is an excellent point. The lack of nuance in debate is a real problem as is the reluctance to listen to and try to understand the perspective of people who have a different opinion to our own.

Thanks again for your insightful comments.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Emilie,

Thanks very much for introducing yourself.

Your work training actors and developing materials for television sounds fascinating.

I’m interested to hear you’ve always implemented social-emotional learning in your teaching.

I very much hope this course will be of great use to you in your teaching and training.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the filmmaking framework.

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.

Great analysis. As you point out, students can use the framework as a checklist as they work on the project.

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.

Good points. As you start working on a project, issues will come up but the framework will help to overcome them. It’s excellent that you’ve pointed out the importance of letting students know the evaluation criteria from the very beginning.

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.

Excellent point. This is always one of the main problems with projects. I think there has to be some tolerance of students using their L1, but we should try to ensure they use the L2 as much as possible.

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.

Great analysis of how the framework could be adapted for online classes.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the film-making activities.

The activities are all very good and definitely worth trying!

I’m delighted you like the activities so much.

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.

Yes. The “five-second film”, and the “one- minute film” are perfect for all levels. I think the how-to videos can also be used at lower levels as students could use mainly the imperative.

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.

Yes. This one is great for talking about personal interests.

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.

Yes. This one works very well. Acting and role play are two great ways to foster empathy. Getting students to write their own dialogues is more ambitious but also more motivating and satisfying.

Thanks for these activities, really interesting!

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the new film genres.

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.

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.

Yes. These music shorts work well with teens. I agree that songs are great for helping students memorise new chunks of language and to improve pronunciation.

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

Yes. Branded short would be perfect with these students.

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

Social shorts can be used to present themes often ignored in coursebooks and can be popular with teens.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the vocabulary activities.

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.

Great idea. I can see this adaptation working well as a pre-viewing task.

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.

Yes. Listening for words/expressions to match the definitions works well with teenagers.

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.

Yes. This one works very well for describing a character’s personality and physical aspect.

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.

I’m sure they’ll work well with your students.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the short film to foster empathy.

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.

Excellent point. The themes of these films and videos often strike a cord with students. the fact that these themes are usually ignored in the classroom, means that when we use films related to these themes, the impact is even greater.

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.

Yes. The camera shots, the music and colours are all used effectively to grab our attention and make us empathise.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the short films and videos.

Did you enjoy the films and videos? – Yes, I did!

I’m delighted you enjoyed the films and videos!

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.

Yes. It’s only really suitable for high levels.

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.

Yes. Mainly of these values do seem to have been neglected for a number of decades.

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”.

I really like the concept of ‘civic literacy’. I’d never heard the phrase before but I like it! I think it’s really interesting that the Italian government has taken this step. It’ll be interesting to see how this develops in schools.

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.

I’m delighted you like this one so much. i think the video shows how effective solidarity campaigns can be.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Angie,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the Black Button.

Black Button

A good choice.

Pre-viewing
Intriguing title, speculate
Pic of characters, speculate

Both of these pre-viewing speculation activities would work well with this film.

While-viewing
Stop and go viewing, speculate where they are, why

Pausing and getting students to predict/speculate works well with this film.

Post-viewing
Discussion questions on morals, afterlife

Two excellent discussion topics for this film.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Angie.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Angie,

Thanks very much for your great lesson overview.

Black Button

This is a good choice.

level B1+, B2, C1 (depending on tasks)

Yes. I agree that this one is probably B1+ and above.

student type teenager, young adult, adult, older adult

Yes. This one isn’t suitable for younger learners.

language vocab not too difficult, only two speakers, one mumbles a bit

Yes. The language isn’t too difficult and there are only two speakers. There is some mumbling, as you point out.

length 6:55min a wee bit over the 5min mark

7 minutes is still fine as there isn’t too much language.

relevance and interest questions of morality and the afterlife are of general interest
task potential

Morality is a good focus. The afterlife is an interesting one.

Give title, have them speculate

The intriguing title here is excellent for speculation and prediction.

Show pic of two characters, have them speculate

The two screenshots for speculation and prediction would work very well here.

Stop and go viewing, speculate what’s going on/how he will decide

This film definitely lends itself to pausing and predicting/speculating.

Discuss morals/afterlife

Two good discussion topics.

Risky: Play Cards against Humanity

I’d never heard of ‘Play Cards against Humanity’ before but I’ve just checked it out. Really interesting concept! It would work really well with this film!

Thanks again for your great lesson overview, Angie.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the short films as narratives.

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 “intriguing title” activity is one of my favourites and, depending on the title, can work really well. I think it’s a more creative and engaging wriitng prompt than more traditional prompts.

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.

This is another of my favourites. Putting yourself into the shoes of anothe rperson is an engaging and motivating writing prompt.

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.

Both of these are easy to implement.

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!

I hope you’ll be able to use some of these with your students. I think you’ll be happy with the results!

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the silent short film activities.

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.

I’m delighted you liked the variety of the activities.

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.

These three activities work well and generate a lot of language.

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.

Absolutely. They’re all really easy to implement.

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.

Yes. Getting different outcomes can be motivating for the teacher.

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.

‘The Conditioned’ image activity is really nice and gets students speculating.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great evaluation of the short film activities.

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

Yes. This is a very robust but flexible framework for working with shorts.

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…

I’m very happy you like this one. Again it’s a robust framework but flexible at the same time.

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?

I like your idea of adding an element of competition.

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.

This one works very well. Students often make brilliant predictions.

Thanks again for your great evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your great analysis of the benefits of using short films.

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’m happy you’ve discovered some new benefits of using shorts in the classroom.

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….

This is a great point. Short films could definitely be beneficial for the types of students you mention.

Thanks again for your great analysis, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Kieran]

Hi Daniela,

Thanks very much for your in-depth evaluation of the viewing framework.

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

Great to have you back!

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.

This makes perfect sense.

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.

I like the way you’ve expressed the benefits here.

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.

I completely agree that this type of active learning would be much more beneficial than simply teaching grammar structures or reading and translating dialogues.

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.

Great point. This framework would definitely work in a CLIL project.

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.

I’m delighted to hear that your headteacher would be receptive to this type of framework.

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!

These are legitimate concerns. Convincing students to spend more time at school is tricky but it might be possible to convince them and their parents of the benefits of this type of project.

Thanks again for your excellent in-depth evaluation, Daniela.

All the best,

Kieran

[Author]

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