approach to showing movies in class;

[ruraljeolla]

Just doing some major “thinking out loud” here as I plan for next week.  This week the students at my high school have their semester finals.  My co-teacher and I will soon get around to discussing what we will do in class next week.

The last time we did this however, I was asked to come up with something fun / interesting / engaging on my own and took steps to prepare, only to find out at the last minute, in those last days of the semester, that the students were simply being allowed to watch a movie of their choice.  Fine, no problem.  Except I had been told to prepare and only at the last minute did my preparations prove to be unnecessary.  The students were burnt-out on school and did not want to have to engage their minds after a week of finals.  I was totally understanding and sympathetic, and I think my co-teacher was, too.  It was a relief to me as I did not feel my preparations were going to be particularly effective in engaging the students.

Fast forward to now:  my co-teacher says it is not "worthwhile” (to the students’ English language education, I assume) to just let them watch a movie, even in English.

I agree, although, in my own efforts to learn Spanish and German, watching movies from my culture (American) dubbed into THOSE languages WAS helpful for me in learning the languages better (listening comprehension, etc).  I do not consider it a completely worthless exercise, necessarily, to simply watch a movie in a foreign language  (with or without subtitles) although it certainly can be worthless for many students.
******
Of course the situation here in Korea is quite different.  While Germany dubs and subtitles into German everything popular that comes out of American (and other) cultures, precious few Korean movies are dubbed into English.  So there are virtually no movies from their own culture that Korean students can listen to in English.  The only equivalents (that come close) seem to be Disney and Pixar animated stuff which have audio in both English and Korean as well as subtitles in both English and Korean (i.e. either language as an option in the audio and either language as an option in the subtitles).
******
What I have found is a website that offers scripts for various movies:

 http://www.script-o-rama.com/

I don’t know if this is allowed, but I will try to include the script to the Pixar movie The Incredibles (which I am well-familiar with in both English and German).  To the extent that it’s “meaningless” to just let the students watch a movie in English, I take the position that it’s at least a step toward more engagement with the language to have the students get some exposure to the English script.
*****

One approach could be to have the students take turns reading 5-10 minutes worth of script and then we watch that portion of the movie together.  That would be tedious, going through the whole movie like that, but do-able.  We could pause to go over challenging vocabulary, grammar and structure, for clarity.

Another approach is to only use those portions of the script that are particularly entertaining, instead of the whole show.  In this case, I would use clips from various movies, such as Toy Story movies and others that are engaging and appealing.

Any ideas welcomed.

[ruraljeolla]

And here's an effort to attach the script for The Incredibles (which I got from script-o-rama).

[ruraljeolla]

Thinking further...

I think from my students' perspective it would be ideal to use a recently-released movie.  Already on piratebay, Transformers 3 is available, along with the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

The challenge would now be finding the scripts, on-line.

I remember when Star Wars episode 2 was still a year and a half from being released, there was already a script available at supershadow.com, which proved to be the actual script used.  I wonder if there are already scripts available for recently-released movies.

[elzoog]

1)  Most Korean movies when they come out on DVD, will have English subtitles as an option on the DVD.   However, given how most Korean students relate to movies (see below) I don't recommend this.

2)  Spending time on a 5 minute dialog in the movie is not a bad idea.  I did that for "Of Mice and Men" where I covered Lennie's conversation with Crooks.

3)  Korean students tend to think of movie watching as just something to do for mere entertainment.   Anything you do to get them out of that mindset is a good idea.   This includes:
    a)  Asking them basic questions about the movie  "What happened so far?"   "What happened to character X?"  In the movie The Incredibles you can ask them "Why does the villian hate Mr. Incredible?"
    b)  Asking them, in an important scene "Why do you think character X said this?"   Or an example I did for Citizen Kane when Charles Kane is signing the Declaration of principles is to ask why is Kane in a shadow when Bernstein and Leland are both in the light?

4)  I agree with you that doing the script for the entire movie would be tedious and would take too long.   However, I wouldn't restrict myself to the most entertaining part of the movie.   I would take a portion of the movie that either:
    a)  Helps them understand dialog in other parts of the movie even if the scene isn't important in and of itself.
    b)  Has useful vocabulary, idioms, or is useful in getting the students to understand the story.
   
5)  Make it very clear to the students that you will be asking questions after, or during, the movie.   That you are definitely not going to play the movie and merely ask "Did you like the movie?" then go on to play a game.

After doing a few movies in class, I can say that hopefully my students know a little bit about character development and plot instead of focusing on whether it has a lot of flashy action or hot chicks.

[elzoog]

Thinking further...

I think from my students' perspective it would be ideal to use a recently-released movie.

True, however Korea is the only culture I know of that totally dismisses anything more than 10 years old.

In the US, there are plenty of people, even teenagers, that like 80s music.  Objectively speaking, it's not the best music (the late 60s and early 70s were generally better).   But for some reason, people are nostalgic about either the 80s or 50s in a way that people are not nostalgic about the late 60s.

In Europe, pretty much any political or social proposal has to appeal to something that happened 1000 years ago.

So, I told students that even today, Citizen Kane is considered to be one of the best movies ever made and gave them evidence for that claim.   I even covered why it's considered the best movie ever made and why, if you did that same movie today (assuming the movie had never been done) it would still be considered innovative.

If you really think an older movie would be useful to do (for whatever reason) don't let the mere fact that it is "old" deter you.

[ruraljeolla]

Thanks for the thoughtful input.

Here's a resource I just found and will look into.

http://englishacademy.voila.net/films.htm

[Sergio_Vendetta]

True, however Korea is the only culture I know of that totally dismisses anything more than 10 years old.

So true. For example, last week, part of my class was 'list your five favourite movies of all time', ('of all time' being the operative phrase) and the majority of students had Kung Fu Panda 2, Transformers 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in their lists.