Short Films in Language Teaching

When structuring a teaching unit on short films, one can resort to the well-known lesson planning patterns (Thaler 2012, 2007b):

PPP (presentation, practice, production)

PWP (pre-while-post)

GtD (global-to-detail)

TBLL (Task-based Language Learning)

Music Video Approach (3 codes, 7 combinations)

In order to focus on listening-viewing or / and cinematic analysis, the 10-step approach can be recommended (Thaler 2014, Fig. 10).

Fig. 10: 10-step approach to listening-viewing

This 10-step approach can be exemplified with the hilarious black humour skit Fatal Beatings ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZMoB6ms2mE), in which a meeting between a strict headmaster (Rowan Atkinson) and a worried student’s father rapidly goes downhill after the headmaster mentions casually that he has beaten his son to death (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11: Fatal Beatings

While this 10-step model is intended to foster the first two skills of short film literacy (see Fig. 8), promoting the third skill, i.e. creating, can be guided by the 10-level pyramid, in which the autonomous production of a short film by the learners takes centre stage (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12: Ten – Level Pyramid

When employing short films in TEFL, teachers should resort to Balanced Teaching , i.e. a synthesis of closed and open methods (Thaler 2008). Fig. 13 elucidates how this basic approach can be adapted for short films.

Fig. 13: Balanced Teaching with short films

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Heinrich, Katrin (1997). Der Kurzfilm. Geschichte, Gattungen, Narrativik. Alfeld: Coppi.

Keddie, Jamie (2014). Bringing Online Video into the Classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

KMK (Hg.) (2003). Bildungsstandards mittlerer Schulabschluss. www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2003/2003_12_04-BS-erste-Fremdsprache.pdf

KMK (Hg.) (2012). Bildungsstandards allgemeine Hochschulreife. www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2012/2012_10_18-Bildungsstandards-Fortgef-FS-Abi.pdf

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Thaler, Engelbert (2016). Kurzfilme im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Praxis Fremdsprachenunterricht 6, 7–11.

Thaler, Engelbert (2015). Literal Music Videos. Praxis Fremdsprachenunterricht 3, 6–7.

Thaler, Engelbert (2014). Teaching English with Films. Paderborn: UTB.

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Thaler, Engelbert (2008). Offene Lernarrangements im Englischunterricht. Berlin: Langenscheidt.

Thaler, Engelbert (2007a). Film-based Language Learning. Praxis Fremdsprachenunterricht 1, 9–14.

Thaler, Engelbert (2007b). Schulung des Hör-Seh-Verstehens. Praxis Fremdsprachenunterricht 4, 12–17.

Thaler, Engelbert (2000). Monty Python. Paderborn: Schöningh.

Klaus Maiwald

Part 1 of the following article outlines didactic reasons and directions of working with films and short films. Part 2 will take a closer look at the innertextual and intertextual qualities of a particular short film, showing how the language of film, its formal means and aesthetic techniques, is integral to language learning with film. Part 3 concludes that while film analysis is no end in itself, it is required in defining and fulfilling language oriented tasks.

Why work with (short) films in language teaching? A simple answer to that question is: because they exist. We study music; we study painting; we study architecture; we study literature; so we study film. (We might even consider film a form of literature.) In any case, film is an art form with a history spanning well over a hundred years (see Faulstich 2005). Film has developed genuine aesthetic codes, for example cut and montage, and specific genres, for example the Western, the Road Movie, the Thriller (see Hickethier 2007: 201ff.; Kammerer 2009). And film has brought forth renowned auteurs and œuvres – or slightly less pretentious: film makers and works. Think about Sergei Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, to name but a few. In his voluminous yet highly readable study The Big Screen. The Story of the Movies and What They Did to Us , David Thomson (2012) traces more than a century in which films have been shaping our thoughts and feelings, about the world and ourselves. If one purpose of higher education is to open up legitimate cultural objects and processes, there is no way around film – unless we exclude film from an elitist concept of a supposed »high culture«.