Proiectul Internațional “Omul drag de la
catedră”
Ediția a III-a 2018-2019
Concurs elevi. Simpozion Internațional
dascăli
ISBN 978-606-725-262-0
THE USE OF
MOVIES, CARTOONS AND SONGS IN DEVELOPING
CREATIVE WRITING SKILLS
Raicu
Carmen, Liceul Tehnologic Bilteni
The teacher has a crucial role in the global development of a
child. Learning to learn includes the development of metacognitive awareness
which includes knowing about oneself as a learner. In the teaching of
literature and story-based lessons, this is a term that incorporates, according
to Ellis and Brewster, the following strands: language awareness, cognitive
awareness (learning how to learn), social, cross-curricular and intercultural
awareness. The development of these different strands can contribute to the
global development of the child. Children need to gain a range of learning
strategies and social skills, as well as linguistic and intercultural
understanding, so they can foster positive attitudes, values and beliefs which
contribute to their motivation to learn, to their realisation of their own
ability to learn, and to their future learning.
Almost everything we have said about
listening applies to video, too (or any other film platform, such as DVDs or
other digitally delivered film; we will use the term video to include all of these. We have to choose video material
according to the level and interests of our students. If we make it too
difficult or too easy, the students will not be motivated. If the content is
irrelevant to the students’ interests, it may fail to engage them.
Video is richer than audio: speakers
can be seen; their body movements give clues as to meaning; so do the clothes
they wear, their location, etc. Background information can be filled in
visually.
Some teachers, however, think that
video is less useful for teaching listening than audio precisely because, with
the visual senses engaged as well as the audio senses, students pay less
attention to what they are actually hearing.
A danger of video is that students
may treat it as they treat watching television – e.g. uncritically and lazily.
There may well be occasions when it is entirely appropriate for them to watch
video in a relaxed way, but more often we will want them to engage, not only
with the content of what they are seeing, but also the language and other
features.
Four particular techniques are
especially appropriate for language learners, and are often used with video
footage:
Play the video without sound: students and teacher discuss what they see
and what clues it gives them, and then they guess what the characters are
actually saying. Once they have predicted the conversation, the teacher rewinds
the video and plays it with sound.
A variation on this technique is to
fast forward the excerpt. The students say what they think was happening. The
teacher can then play the extract with sound, or play it, again, without sound,
but this time at normal speed.
Play the audio without the picture: this reverses the previous procedure. While
the students listen, they try to judge where the speakers are, what they look
like, what’s going on, etc. When they have predicted this, they listen again,
this time with the visual images as well.
Freeze frame:
the teacher presses the pause button and asks the students what’s going to
happen next. Can they predict the action – and the language that will be used?
Dividing the class in half: half the class face the screen. The other half sit with their backs to
it. The ‘screen’ half describe the visual images to the ‘wall’ half.
Gretchen L. Gallagher, in Using Film and Literature in the Elementary
Classroom: The Jungle Book , states that combining the mediums of film and
literature to spark interest and creativity, should, at the same time, helps to
improve the academic and social skills of the students. The Jungle Book has been adapted for the screen in both live-action
and animated narrative forms. When Carole Cox conducted a study which posed the
question ‘What films do children like?’, she presented upper-elementary aged
children with short films, and asked them to rank the films on a scale of one
(well-liked) to four (disliked). Interestingly, she found that the children
preferred live-action narrative films over all the others. Cox concluded that
‘apparently prefer the qualities of story, or narrative, and human characters
in realistic surroundings and situations, recorded through live-action filming
techniques’.Animated narrative films ranked next (other films were
non-narrative live-action films and non-narrative animated films). Since The Jungle Book is available on CDs and Internet in both of
the preferred movie styles, it will appeal to children who prefer live-action
films as well as those who prefer animated films.
In addition, both movie styles have
strenghts and limitations to explore. For example, the live-action movie takes
liberties with Kipling’s original story, greatly expanding the role of humans.
Most of the movie focuses upon Mowgli’s relationship with the Englishmen who
wish to have Mowgli lead them to a vast treasure. The arch-villain in this
movie is an evil English soldier rather than Shere Khan, the tiger; in fact,
Mowgli and Shere Khan unite in friendship against the Englishmen. The nature of
animation, on the other hand, allows this narrative to remain more true to
Kipling’s The Jungle Book . The focus
of the animated film is on Mowgli’s relationship to the jungle animals which
are his friends. This version is more a fantasy than the live-action film, as
is the novel. The wild animal speak, sing and dance: these feats are impossible
to accomplish in a live-action film.
Reading The Jungle Book with the students, concentrating on the Mowgli stories,
as well as viewing both films, will encourage the students to develop critical
thinking skills by comparing story elements of text and film. Rickelman and
Henk assert that ‘video technologies and their respective media can take a
significant contribution to a literature-based reading curriculum [as long as]
the media preserves the integrity of the technology, and entices the child[ren]
into exploring the book firsthand’. Duncan states that films serve as models
for a creative response to literature by allowing students to look at the way
movement, scenery and speech operate to bring a narrative to life.
Further evidence to support the use
of both literature and film to improve comprehension skills is presented in a
study carried out in the Netherlands by Beentjes and van der Voort which
compared children’s written accounts of televised and printed stories. Children
either watched a televised story or read its printed version, and then retold
the story in writing. Results showed that stories written by those who saw the
televised version were more complete and contained fewer errors. However,
stories written by children who read the printed version were easier to
understand as they contained specific character references and more descriptive
details.
Cox reminds educators that the use
of films can be ‘critical to the creation of a positively charged instructional
atmosphere in a classroom, [but that it] requires the same careful thought,
planning and evaluation that go into any component of instruction which links
the arts with language and provides children the raw material with which to
sense, feel, think and use an expressive mode themselves’.
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