Movie day with students

During the past 1 year, this beginner English teacher has been trying different methods to get students' attention, to get them to like, even, this language that is seemingly unnecessary to them. So today I've tried something that I've never attempted before. I called them for a special lesson. To watch an English movie!

Out of the 44 invited students, merely half of them decided to show up including 3 or 4 who stayed at the hostel. Most of them were from the A class, and only 2 of them were male.

The movie was 'Horton Hears a Who', a movie which I had watched for more times than I cared to count and had enjoyed tremendously. I also find the movie very suitable as the language used weren't too hard and there was narration peppered throughout the movie. It's also fortunate that none of them had ever watched the movie. For the purpose of learning, I intentionally put the English subtitles on, despite urges from the kids to switch to Malay. Not that I had that option in the first place.

It was supposed to start at 9.30, but some technical hitches and glitches stalled the showing time for about half an hour. Being the IT savvy person I am, (heh!) I got the situation under control. And so the movie played on.

It was an awkward moment I tell you. There were scenes which were supposed to be funny but the room was just completely silent. They only responded to joke which has to do with gestures. The ones that involve dialogue - none whatsoever. It's clear what the problem here is.

Teacher, cannot understand!!

By the mid point, I find that I was about the only one still giving a crap about the movie, as most of them were either busy with their expensive cellies or just having a forum with their buddies. Some even left midway through the movie. I didn't try to stop them as I didn't made this session compulsory in the first place.

At the end of it, there were about 14 students left and I did get some good feedback from them. They didn't get a whole lot out of the movie, but they at least learnt a few new words. It's not significant, but it's meaningful enough to justify having another movie day in the future.

My only big disappointment is that I could have used that 3 hours playing more games!(and by extension, more achievements)! I only hope the students can appreciate this sacrifice I made by giving me money doing well in their coming tests.

Teaching English - Futile

Note: I have noticed that my brain is functioning much slower lately. I have been in instances where I had to think before a word comes to my mind. So, to exercise my degenerating mental prowess, I have took it upon myself to produce an academic writing during my free time at school. The result is the following, my personal opinion of the teaching of English in rural schools, or to be more specific, the school in which I am teaching in. I wasn't too pleased with the outcome, but as a mental exercise, it serves it's purpose.

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Meaning-focused input, form-focused instruction, meaning-focused output, and fluency. The four strands that I was constantly reminded during my student days as the core components of language learning. Through my experience teaching so far (which, admittedly isn't that long), I have come to notice that there are much more factors that come into play before it is even possible to reach the four strands. One tha stands out most to me is not on our part as the educator, but rather on the students and their role in language learning.

One: The first being, the students' own willingness to ingest the input given by the teacher. I have tried my best to use English in my classroom. English, which I gone through a lot of trouble to dumb down to more suit my learners; level. Yet so day, my teaching in English had resulted in futility simply because there is a mental barrier set up in the students' conundrum, almost as if there is a switch that automatically registers English words as unrecognizable gibberish.

The mental barrier condemns the students' language learning to their submission to "I don't know English". strangely enough, I get that sentence (gramatically correct, I might add), so often that proves their statement wrong. One has to wonder that the real situation isn't that they do not understand, but rather, they refuse to understand any input they receive.

Two: The next factor stems the issue that (my) students aren't at all keen in using English. Not in class, and most definitely not outside of it. Without having a consciouss choice to actually practice what they've learnt (also, considering that nothing might have been learnt in the first place!), there will not be a chance for neither meaning-focused output nor fluency practice to take place.

These two factors I propose come from a deep-rooted issue which I have come to identify - the source of why English learning seemed to be such an impossiblity. A point, that I will discuss in my third and final point.

Three: I have conducted a semi-formal interview with a number of my students in my school. The following were the three questions that I asked:

1. Do you watch English movies/shows?


2. Do you listen to English music?


3. Do you like English?

My findings revealed that the vast majority openly voiced their dislike for English movies, even those with feature Malay subtitles. English music fared a little better but the bombshell was that about 90% of them plainly admitted that they do not like English at all (of note, they didn't seem to like most of the other subjects either). Interestingly, my two best students - whose 'best' is most probably comparable to 'mediocre' to the better schools out there - are those who rather enjoy watching and listening to English materials.

It's a clear fact - and I know that my colleagues are surely aware of this - that there is a very strong relation between the students' own interest in a target language and their capacity to learn the language. So perhaps, instead of wasting the effort on actual language teaching, the first step would be by winning the students over to liking the language. The killer question is 'how'. I've tried from storybooks to videos to songs and nothing worked so far. I am at the point where I start to wonder if there is any hope to teach English to (most of) my students.

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