Movies & Language

I have been pointed to this great great blog by a colleague of mine (hi, Helena!).

It is called Movie Segments to Assess Grammar Goals. Wow, that's a long title. Still perfectly explanatory of the object of the blog. It uses subtitled movie clips to illustrate specific points of the English grammar. It is an excellent tool for learning in a less conventional way.

I'm loving it. Really. Thanks Claudio Azevedo for such a great piece of work.

And there is more. Here, you can also find loads of material realted to the connection of movies and languages. Great suff indeed.

Science for everyone

Here is a web site with scientific contents for the sci-geeks in you! It's called "Science Daily" and its great to be up-to-date with scientific research.

I particularly recommend the Videos section. 

Documentaries we have watched

With 3rd year students we watched 2 great documentaries, one about the origin of our planet produced by the History Channel. You can watch it here.

Then we watched Super Size Me. An incredible journey to the center of the fast food world and its consequences on our bodies. Morgan Spurlock directs and appears in this risky but enlightening personal experiment.

Stay tuned. More coming up soon...

Movies, movies, movies...

Here is an update of our cinematic activity this first term at Vacarisses.

We have seen Pride & Prejudice, based on the wonderful novel by Jane Austen, with Keira Knightley. A powerful love story with social commentary.

We have also seen Remember the Titans, with Denzel Washington. A touching historic event about race, cooperation and resilience.

More coming up on the New Year...

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is the film we are watching this month.

It is an "indie" love comedy with lots of comic-book, videogames, music video language thrown in. It is a very cool visual fest. And it's fun, too.

Here, you can read the imdb.com page for it with loads of info.

Series we are watching: Heroes (4th of ESO)

Our 4th of ESO students are watching the hit series Heroes.

Here you have some useful links, read and learn some more about this contemporary TV hit.

1. Wikipedia entry for Heroes

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_%28TV_series%29
  

2. Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) entry for Heroes

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813715/

3. A dedicated fan page:

• http://www.herosite.net/
  

Series we are watching: Fame (3rd of ESO)

Our 3rd of ESO students are watching the 80's hit series Fame.

Here you have some useful links, read and learn some more about this TV classic.

1. Wikipedia entry for Fame

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fame_%281982_TV_series%29

2. Internet Movie DataBase (IMDB) entry for Fame

• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083412/

3. A dedicated fan page

• http://www.fameforever.com/
  
  
  

Watching subtitled videos is a good idea

As part of the course, we have joined a project that is trying to prove that watching subtitled videos improves our learning of a foreign language.

It belongs to the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission and it is called: "Subtitles and language learning" and you can see its home page here: http://sublanglearn.utu.fi/







Our way to participate consists of watching a series throughout the year at a rate of one chapter (45 minutes) every two weeks. We watch it in the original language (English) and use subtitles in Spanish.

The core idea is this: watching videos in the original version with the help of subtitles we can understand easily is a good help to our learning of the English language.

Simple, and true. And fun.