Study on the Status of Movie English in the EFL Classroom

Park, Young

doi:2019.20.4.83

J Eng Teach Movie Media > Volume 20(4); 2019 > Article

Article

Journal of English Teaching through Movies and Media 2019;20(4):83-101.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.16875/stem.2019.20.4.83 Published online November 30, 2019.

Study on the Status of Movie English in the EFL Classroom

Young Park

Abstract

This paper presents a view on how to develop a way of teaching and learning English through movies. It is commonly accepted that the strong points of movies are 1) inputflood 2) practical expressions and 3) amusement. This study suspects that these points have no theoretical basis. In this paper, the terms ‘input-flood,’ ‘practical expressions,’ and ‘amusement’ will each be changed into ‘speech community,’ ‘idiomatic expressions,’ and ‘contextual priming based on a story.’ It will be shown that these three concepts are strongly theory-based. This study also criticizes the view of inputflood focused only on linguistic elements. It will be maintained that the concept of speech community includes linguistic and non-linguistic elements, such as culture, values, etc., knowledge of which leads to better communication in English. It does not seem that there is a positive relation between learning practical expressions and language development. Instead, idiomatic expressions are considered to be the main theme of Construction Grammar. It is also not for sure that amusement leads to language development. It could distract attention from learning. Rather, contextual priming will be described through story-basis. Two influential movies, i.e., Easy A and Ant-Man will be used to show the effectiveness of contextual priming.

Key Words: speech community;idiomatic expressions;contextual priming