Welcome to English Through Movies! English Through Movies is a selective course for third year diploma students. If you study this course successfully, you earn 4 credits. Before you start, it might be a good idea to go over the following introduction and get prepared for your later study of this course.

1. What is the course about?

This course helps you to learn and practise English by watching English movies. "Can we learn English by watching movies?" you may ask. Yes, of course you can. It all depends on the way you watch them. I suggest you watch the movies in the following ways.

　for entertainment
I hope you do not think that just because something is fun - entertaining - that it cannot have an educational purpose. Cultures have traditionally passed on their group wisdom in the form of stories - that's what literature is. When we listen to a story, we are listening to an explanation of what life is about. Whether we hear it as a spoken tale, read it as a novel, or watch it as a film, we are always 'listening to a story'. It is enjoyable - and it is instructive.

So the first thing you must do is enjoy the film. If you can get the complete film online or on video, then you should try to watch it once before the tutorial - but simply for enjoyment. We will be analysing the film in detail during the tutorial, discussing the characters, explaining the plot, so as well as simple enjoyment there will be plenty of in-depth study.

　for language
Simply watching a film exposes you to language - language in a real life situation, which you cannot have in a book. You can see the expressions on the characters' faces as they speak, hear the inflection of anger or humour in their voices, see the action that produces or is produced by the words. This in itself is of great value. Furthermore, we shall be studying parts of the film in great detail, and there will be lots of exercises to be done, lots of language manipulation for you to practise. You will see the English language being used in all sorts of ways, and you will be required to use it yourself in all sorts of ways, in other words you will have to use the language for communication.

Which is what language is for.

However this course is not a grammar course or a vocabulary course or a reading/writing/listening course- those language areas are dealt with in other parts of your diploma course. This course is a language practice and enrichment course. No word lists to be learned, no structure analysis. We will be talking about ideas, concepts, making judgments, giving opinions. And always communicating.

　for cultural information
The films we will be watching and studying have an explicit message - the story, the experience of the characters, their situation, their joys, their pain, their laughter, their tears. There will also be an implicit message, details of the culture from which the films come which are not necessarily consciously selected. There will be details concerning lifestyles, working habits, dress, cuisine. There will be political opinions and assumptions, there will be religious references, there will be humour, even satire.

Since most films are made in America, the culture represented is largely American, but this culture extends over much of the Western world, certainly all the English-speaking countries, and so it can largely be considered as representing Western culture in general. We will be picking out a number of cultural details for you to look at closely, and you will undoubtedly pick up many more yourselves.

　for observing and reflecting upon life
All good films - even bad ones, perhaps - will have elements in them that make us stop and reflect. 'Am I like that character?' you may ask yourself. Or 'I wish I were like that character," you may say. In watching a film, we live through a story into which most of us project ourselves. We become the hero or the heroine, feeling their pain, enjoying their triumph. And as the story unfolds, there will be moments at which judgments may be made: 'That is the right thing to do.' Or, 'that is the wrong thing to do.'

Reflecting upon life in this way is part of our moral and intellectual development. It is a process which starts early in life when children play. If you watch children at play - or think back, if you can remember, to your own childhood - you will see that all the great issues, all the great emotions of life are dealt with - war, crime, fear, love, hatred, marriage, parenthood, even death. Watch children at play (just like young animals at play) and you see the young learning how to enter the adult world. Literature and films represent play for adults. And reflection is part of that play.

2. Resources checklist

First thing first. Let's make sure that you have everything you need. The resources are put together for you as a learning package.

Note: I suggest you have access to a computer with the Internet connection. Or at least you can go to an Internet café to get the information about the course, because there is no regular face-to-face tutorial for this course.


3. Time Management

As a student of our online institute, you mainly study on your own. But we always support you. We are not going to fix everything for you. Rather, we offer to help you organize your own study.

I know you are very busy, like everybody else. It is essential that you prioritize your time very well.

If you are a full-time student, we recommend that you finish it within 8 weeks.
If you are a part-time student, we recommend that you finish it within 16 weeks.

4. How to make use of the study materials

Online tutorial or CD-Rom tutorial
You study the course by attending the online tutorial (or CD-Rom tutorial) first, and follow the instructions and do the exercises. Besides, you may go to the online chatroom to discuss with your tutor and your colleagues what you have learned. There are three assignments for this course. Hand them in according to the arranged schedule. The tutor will mark your assignments and give you feedback.

The print textbook and film VCD
You follow the print textbook very closely, and watch the film VCD as requested by the text. There are three assignments for this course. Hand them in according to the arranged schedule. The tutor will mark your assignments and give you feedback.

5. Introduction to the tutorial for this course

In this course you will study 8 films. Each tutorial covers one film. At the end of the 8 tutorials there will be a final tutorial which will serve as an orientation for the examination - clearly, a course as different as this one is from standard English courses must have an examination that will be somewhat different from the standard examination. We will make sure that you are familiar both with the format of the exam, and with the types of task we will be asking you to fulfill.

Each tutorial will follow the same general structure. There will be:

a warm up, that will help you recognise the type of film we are dealing with - whether it is a fantasy or a comedy or a musical or a satire etc.
Task 1 will identify the characters in the film by name and some kind of description of the characters together with their relationship to other characters.
Task 2 will look at the synopsis - that is, a summary of the plot - and there will be detailed questions about it in a number of different exercise formats.
Task 3 will go through the 5 or 6 excerpts for the film and there will be detailed questions concerning plot and character.
Task 4 will look at some of the deeper meanings in the film. You will be invited to make judgements about a number of important issues, and given an opportunity to reflect on them.
Task 5 will look at some of the cultural elements in the film and you will be invited both to analyse and to give opinions on these elements.
Task 6 will look at the humour in the film (most of them are comedies of one sort or another) or, where the film is not a comedy, will focus on things like film-making technique.
At the end of each tutorial there will be a short review with links that will allow you to revisit any part of the tutorial that you feel needs a repeat.

6. Assessment

This course is going to be a self-study course. We provide online tutorial and face-to-face question and answer sessions. For assessment, you need to finish three assignments and do one exam. The three assignments will make up fifty percent of the total and the final exam will make the other fifty percent. The total score of this course is 100. 60 out of 100 means a pass. If you get 85, you gain an excellence.

7. But the examination will be too difficult!

No, it won't.

The course will be difficult, in the sense that that you will be watching real films using modern language spoken at normal conversational speeds. Furthermore, the tutorial discussion will use the full range of educated, academic English, with no attempt made to simplify or 'talk down to' you, the learner. We assume that you are a highly intelligent and motivated individual who are willing to accept a challenge, and that you will respond to discussion that will cover many of the most important philosophical and social and personal issues in life.

But we do not expect you to be able to reproduce such language with the same ease and fluency - that would be unrealistic. If you could do that, you wouldn't need this course. What we hope you will do is manipulate such language, with much of the input provided by us, and the choices made by you. You will, of course, have to comprehend - we can't help you there - but when we ask you to make comments or pass judgements, we will provide the building blocks for those comments or judgements to be made. You will see what we mean when you do the first tutorial.

And it will be the same for the examination. You won't have to learn any wordlists by heart. Don't make structure tables, don't memorise long quotations - they'll be no good to you. The exam will have the same format as the tutorials: lots of audio, lots of video, lots of manipulation exercises - and you will be able to pass it simply by virtue of having followed the tutorial series.

So ... DON'T PANIC - and enjoy the course!