Teaching Global Issues through English Movies by Yasuyo Fukuraga Intp:/!jeltorg/lobal’30Moy. ta
® crobai issues in Language Education: Issue 30, March 1998. (p. 7-0)
Teaching Global Issues through English Movies
by Yasuyo Fukunaga
(Ferris University. Yoichme, Jopan)
Film as a Window to the World
When | was @ child, | went to the movies for entertainment like millions of
other kids. One day, | saw Stanley Kubrick's anti-war film Dr. Strangelove
(1963) and, though I'd often been told about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this,
made me really start thinking soriously about the madness of nuclear
destruction. Stanley Kramer's film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) about
mixed-race romance later taught me about racism for the first time in my life.
‘Thus, from an early age, film has helped to promote my awareness of the world
and of the social and global issues it faces.
‘The Hollywood director D. W. Griffith once said, “The task | am trying to
achieve is, above all, to make people see.” Films show us what i's like to be
human. They help us view the world and identify with places and issues we
might otherwise be unaware of.
Global Issues through Movies
Serious world problems of war, human rights, tropical rainforests and so on
can be hard for language learners to connect with. Approaching global issues
through movies is, therefore, a useful strategy, especially when the issues
som too difficult, too time-consuming or too remote from students’ lives, The
visual aspect of movies can help students understand both the language used
and the issues portrayed. Further, movies speak to studonts' emotions as well
as to their intellect, and allow them to enter an unknown world and experience
its conflicts. Movies are authentic materials that bring real life into the
classroom and provide a context in which language is effectively learned
A Global Issues Through Movies Course
For the past four years, I've taught a college EFL course called ‘English
through Global Issue Movies’. The goal of my course is to help students
improve their English language abilities, promote independent research skills,
sharpen critical thinking skills, develop discussion and presentation skills, and
foster intercultural understanding, The course runs for one-year and features
five classes each on key global issues such as war and peace, human rights.
minorities, the Holocaust and women's issues. My leaching procedure is
roughly as follows:
1. [ start by giving students a preliminary task to help them focus on the topic. For an
issue like AIDS, this can involve guessing (¢ g what a red ribhon means; why
Magic Johnson is famous), brainstorming, a cross-word puzzle, key word
saan Niecy sn vu aml aL ie: ernie Se arse ROT TGR ce Farrier “eeaebecananiaeta:Total Issues through English Movies by Yasuyo Fukunaga Int: //jat org/glabal/30Mov hen
ets of Philadelphi
I next show the class a 10 to 15 minute scene from the movie which clearly
presents the Key issues. After viewing, I ask students yes-no questions to check
their basic understanding of vocabulary, the social background and the context of
Ube story.
. [then give students a fill-in-the-blank movie dictation to complete in groups while
watching an edited film clip I prepare before class. For this, I show them the same
scene 5 times in succession. Since some students are good at listening and others
at grammar, they leam to cooperate through sharing and discussing their ideas in a
small group.
4. [next have students do small group role plays based on the dictated script. This
can be replaced by an information gap, interview game or by shadowing in the
lange lab.
To deepen understanding of the context and the issue, | bave each group write at
Teast one question about the scene they saw on TV. The questions are written on
the board and answered by other groups, The teacher can prepare these questions
if students have difficulty due to low language skills. I give a review and
comments after each question.
6. At the end of the semester, | assign students a short speech based on an English
essay which they are required to write on an issue and film of their choice. The
final class activity for the course can be a debate. a presentation or a student
research report.
Choosing Global Issue Movies
Two criteria should be used to choose movies for global issues language
teaching: whether the movie has appropriate content for the issue to be studied
and whether it is suitable for language learning. The process of choosing a
00d film can take more time and effort than imagined, often involving viewing
dozens of films, sometimes several times each. Big box-office success movies
aren't always good for teaching, sometimes B-grade movies are better. Good
movies for college students aren't necessarily good for junior high school and
vice versa
Video Scripts and Closed Captions
‘Students don't leam much when teachers simply show a feature-length
English movie straight through in class. Rather, you should try and select a
number of short, teachable scenes from the movie and design language
activities around these. Careful selection and editing are important when
adapting authentic materials for classroom use.‘Iobal Issues throush English Movies by Yasuyo Fukunaea bnupsifjal-ore/lobal/30Mov.him
Obtaining copies of movie scripts can be a great help in preparing teaching
materials. Some movie screenplays are available at bookstores and on the
Intemet, though not many are for global issue films. You can also use closed
captioned videos (marked with a CC or a TV logo) which show the dialog being
spoken as subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Closed captions have been
provided for American video movies since 1990 thanks to the ‘Americans with
Disabilities Act’. To make the English subtitles appear on your TV, you need a
closed caption decoder connected to your VCR
Captions can be down-loaded into your computer and used to create
teaching materials. You can make fil-in-the-blank worksheets, for example,
without having to type in every word, and you can even search movie dialog for
a particular grammar item. This allows you to teach grammar in a more natural.
“real life” context than with a more prosaic grammar book, To teach the
subjunctive using the AIDS film Philadelphia, for example, just type in "if" and
click on the search button. You'll find 18 sentences in the subjunctive mood,
one example being:
00:43:36 If you ever need a lawyer, give me a call.
Grammar can also be practiced in a communicative way through video. In
the movie Philadelphia, for example, lawyer Denzel Washington talks with his
wife about meeting AIDS patient Tom Hanks
003514 | got @ question. Would you accept a client if you were
constantly thinking "| don't want this person to touch me.
| don't want him to even breathe on me"?
Here, students can practice the conditional by discussing: "If | were Denzel
Washington, | would..." all in the context of language teaching to promote AIDS
education.
Teaching Critical Film Awareness
Teachers doing "English through global issue films” can also teach students
strategies to understand the medium of film itself. Students should learn to
appreciate films, yet at the same time they should gain a critical awareness of
how commercial movies are made and of how film can influence us.
The film Mississippi Burning (1986), for example, is a powerful movie based
on actual events which can help students learn about racism, violence and the
1960s civil rights movement in the American South. When compared to an ABC
documentary, however, it quickly becomes clear that Hollywood took liberties
with the facts, distorting the role of the FBI and inventing a romance in order to
make the story more melodramatic to ensure a box office success.
‘A number of Hollywood films can help students to understand social issues
in Asia, The Year of Living Dangerously (1983), for example, features Mel
Gibson as an Australian reporter who confronts the political upheavals in 1960s
Indonesia while The Killing Fields (1984) shows the horrors of the 1970s Khmer
Rouge massacres in Cambodia. While these films offer great scope for getting
language learners to think about human rights in Asia, both are shown through
the aves-ct Viestemers rather than throudh: the eves of Asians ihemecives: