I love Movie Talk the way Dr. Ashley J. Hastings intended it to be: no language targets, no curriculum agenda, no circling of key vocabulary. It so freeing and authentic to simply focus on telling our students an interesting story in comprehensible language. I have done Movie Talk with quiet students, chatty students, novice and intermediate students, and all age groups in a variety of school settings. It is simple to implement, engaging to our students, and the language sticks.
There are three main reasons why I love Movie Talk so much:
- It is versatile. You can use it to fit your curriculum but you don’t have to! You can tell the story of same video to a variety of students, adapting the language to their proficiency level.
- It builds community. I love seeing my students enthusiastically make predictions and then watching the video together.
- It allows me to introduce a variety of identities, contexts, and stories to my students.
In 2021, I created an online session on Movie Talk for Comprehended. With permission from Scott Benedict, the organizer of the conference, I am releasing it in order to share the joy and the genius of this simple strategy with teachers who follow this blog. Feel free to leave comments or questions. Happy viewing!
PS: if you understand French, we have a ton of MT resources on IFPROFS!
[…] Movie Talk: Use a video to tell an interesting story in comprehensible language. […]
Merci beaucoup! I really enjoyed watching the demo with your students – it made me feel like this is something I could definitely try!
I hope you do and I hope you report back!! This video was in the second semester of French 1, so if you have Novice, start small (10 min). Let me know if you want recos for the first Movie Talk video!
Please let me know once you have tired! It is my students’ top 3 favorite activities. Happy to help further.
Thank you for all of your resources. I’m looking forward to giving them a try. In your movie talk video you mentioned that there was a collection of movie talks for French teachers. Can you tell me where I can find these? Merci encore!
I can;t wait to hers how it goes! here is the resource: https://ifprofs.org/us/groupe/movie-talks/10776
Merci beaucoup! Je suis nouvelle prof et nouvelle prof français. CI is new for me and I’m training myself so this is so helpful.
Glad you found this helpful!