Many of my fellow ESL teachers are afraid to show movies in their  classroom.
“Why?” I ask.

“We weren’t hired to show movies,” they always say. “We are supposed to teach.”

They are right, of course. A television is no substitute for a teacher. Yet, my students with the best pronunciations and vocabulary tell me that they owe their proficiency to watching English movies. I believe them. Learing English while watching life events unfold is a very good way to retain new expressions and sentence structures.

If your school has the technological capabilities to show movies in the classroom, I would suggest that you take advantage of the opportunity. Not everyday of course. Not even every week. In fact, you can use the possibility of showing a movie as an incentive for students to pay attention and do well in your class.

Unless you have an unusually long class period, you would probably only have time to show half of a film at best. You should choose a part of the movie which you feel is the most beneficial to your students on their quest to improve their English.

What kind of movies should you show in class? That depends, of course, on the age group of your students. For children, I would suggest that you show a cartoon or Pixar film. Teenagers would probably enjoy seeing contemporary action movies or love stories (with minimal violence and sex), while adults would enjoy just about anything. Just make sure you that you show a movie that has alot of English speaking in it. ‘Mr Bean’s Holiday’, for example, may be a very funny movie, but it contains too little speaking for it to be a worthwhile ESL tool.

Whatever you show, it is a good idea to ask your students to write down some new words and expressions that they hear. If you have enough time, you can even prepare a brief Q & A sheet for them to have on their desks as they watch the movies. You should leave yourself 10 minutes before the end of the class to discuss the movie with your students.

If your boss or another teacher questions your decision to show your class an English movie now and then, politely explain that you are helping your students to understand Western culture better as well as improve their vocabulary. It is as simple as that!

I agree that if we’re targeting on English language proficiency, it’s not enough to teach them the rules of grammar, writing and speaking. The best teacher they can have is the experience of listening to real conversations/dialogs , imitating the correct pronunciation and using correctly idioms in life situations.

Instruction: Rank each statement 0, 1, or 2. Write 0 if you disagree with the statement and write 2 if  you strongly agree. Write 1 if you are somewhere in between. Then calculate your score for each intelligence type.

Interpersonal Intelligence
a.                  ___     I’m often the leader in activities
b.                  ___     I enjoy talking to my friends
c.                  ___     I often help my friends
d.                  ___     My friends often talk to me about their problems
e.                  ___     I’ve got a lot of friends
f.                    ___     I’m a member of several clubs
___     TOTAL FOR INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

Intrapersonal Intelligence
a.                  ___     I go to the cinema alone
b.                  ___     I go to the library alone to study
c.                  ___     I can tell you some things I’m good at doing
d.                  ___     I like to spend time alone
e.                  ___     My friends find some of my actions strange sometimes
f.                    ___     I learn from my mistakes
___     TOTAL FOR INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

Logical – Mathematical Intelligence
___     I often do calculations in my head
a.                  ___      I like to put things into categories
b.                  ___      I’m good at chess and/or draughts
c.                  ___      I like to play number games
d.                  ___      I love to play around with Computers
e.                  ___      I ask lots of questions about how things work
___      TOTAL FOR LOGICO-MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE

Linguistic Intelligence
a.                  ___      I like to read books, magazines and newspapers
b.                  ___      I consider myself a good reader
c.                  ___      I like to tell jokes and Stories
d.                  ___      I can remember people’s names easily
e.                  ___      I like to recite tongue twisters
f.                    ___      I have a good vocabulary in my native language
___      TOTAL FOR LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE

Bodily – Kinaesthetic Intelligence
a.      ___            It’s hard for me to sit quietly for a long time
b.      ___            It’s easy for me to copy exactly what other people do
c.      ___            I’m good at sewing, woodwork, building or mechanics
d.      ___            I’m good at Sports
e.      ___            I enjoy working with my hands – working with clay or model making, for example
f.        ___            I enjoy physical exercise
___      TOTAL FOR BODILY-KINAESTHETIC  INTELLIGENCE

Spatial Intelligence
a.                  ___      I can read maps easily
b.                  ___      I enjoy art activities
c.                  ___      I can draw well
d.                  ___      Videos and slides really help me to learn new Information
e.                  ___      I love books with pictures
f.                    ___      I enjoy putting puzzles together
___      TOTAL FOR SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE

Musical Intelligence
a.                  ___     I can hum the tunes to lots of songs
b.                  ___     I’m a good singer
c.                  ___     I play a musical instrument or sing in a choir
d.                  ___     I can tell when music sounds off-key
e.                  ___     I often tap rhythmically on the table or desk
f.                    ___     I often sing songs
___     TOTAL FOR MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE

Naturalist Intelligence
a.      ___           I spend a lot of time outdoors
b.      ___           I enjoy listening to the sounds created in the natural world birdsong, for example
c.      ___           I can identify plant life and animal species
d.      ___           I can distinguish between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes and/or between poisonous and edible mushrooms
e.      ___           I enjoy observing plants and/or collecting rocks
f.        ___           I’ve got green fingers – I keep pot plants at home and have an interest in gardening, for example
___     TOTAL FOR NATURALIST INTELLIGENCE

How to Classify the Learners According to their Intelligences: Simply get the highest score in the different areas or category in the checklist, whichever intelligence that the pupil/student scored the highest will be his Intelligence.Some leraners may demonstrate more than one intelligence.

Procedures
1. Say, “I went to the zoo and I heard this sound _____.” (For example, growl like a tiger or chirp like a parrot.)
2. Then say, “I turned around and saw a _____.”
3. Ask students to guess what animal you saw.
4. Continue playing, making new animal sounds.
5. After a few rounds, ask student volunteers to lead the game.

Variation: Other locations where sounds are heard like sounds in a street, in the country; in the city; in the forest; at school, in a farm, etc.

1. Vary Grouping Strategies ~ Groups should be arranged based on the purpose of the activity. Whatever grouping techniques you use, your aim in the grouping is for a better individualized instruction.

2. Model Activities First ~ Teachers must explicitly show students how to work together. Modelling must begin from the way the teacher groups the class to the performance of the group activity .

3. Recognize Effective Group Work ~ Successful groups must share with the whole class insights into their effective grouping. Special recognition or points for successful groups can be given as incentives to their job well done.

I am sure the following tips can help.

• Create an environment where learners feel secure and are prepared to take risks.
• Support and value learners’ languages and cultures.
• Build on the knowledge, skills and understandings that students bring to the learning context
• Build on the linguistic understandings students have of their own language
• Use themes and topics which are relevant to learners’ particular needs
• Focus on purposeful communicative activities which are comprehensible and appropriate to the learner’s age and needs
• Generally teach the macro skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in an integrated way, although at times there may be a need to focus on a particular aspect of one such as pronunciation, listening to specific instructions
• Focus on developing learners’ oral language skills for oral language development and to support writing
• Explicitly teach new language (vocabulary, text types, grammar, sound knowledge, pronunciation, intonation) in the context of a theme or topic
• Use pair and group work and peer/cross age tutoring to maximise language interaction in a low stress environment and to encourage risk taking
• Use an experiential approach to provide meaningful contexts
• Use visual cues wherever necessary to clarify and reinforce concepts
• Use graphic organisers (diagrams, timelines, concept maps etc) to represent and organise ideas and to develop thinking skills
• Encourage older learners to keep a glossary or a personal dictionary of words and meanings
• Ensure that assessment tasks, activities and criteria are relevant to the student’s stage of English language development

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