Christmas Greetings

Having shared this wonderful year with you all, we would really like to thank you for your feedback and support.

It is our hope that next year will find us with renovated strength to embark upon new ideas, projects and dreams. Now it is just time for family get-togethers and some rest!




May you have the best Christmas surrounded by your beloved ones and the happiest New Year.




Challenge Education

Dealing with functions

Although there are different approaches to teaching functions, we believe that illustrating the language in context is the clearest way. When students see people apologising, inviting, suggesting, etc, they fully comprehend what functions mean and how to deal with them.

Here is the lesson plan prepared to work with the movie The Haunted Mansion. The main character, Jim Evers, is talking to his wife: is he apologising? Is he introducing himself? What is he doing?

Enjoy this Lesson Plan with your Pre-Intermediate students and let us know how it works out.

If you haven’t seen the film, here’s the trailer.

Some reasons why using movies in a ESL/EFL classroom is a great idea

Working with feature films

• Is intrinsically motivating
• Exposes students to different native speaker voices, slang, reduced speeches, stress, accent, dialects
• Provides contextualized linguistic, paralinguistic and authentic cross-cultural information

You can use them to

• Practise listening strategies and fluency
• Illustrate grammar and pronunciation points
• Learn new vocabulary, idioms and context-bound expressions
• Present cultural background
• Encourage theme-based discussion
• Provide enjoyable language learning opportunities

“Using authentic sources from the native speech community helps to engage students in authentic cultural experiences” (Peterson & Coltrane, 2003).

References
King, J. 2002. “Using DVD feature films in the EFL classroom.” The weekly column.
Marcikiewicz, A. “How to Teach Through Culture and Culture Through Popular Movies?”
Peterson, E. & Coltrane, B. 2003. “Culture in Second Language Teaching”, Centre for Applied Linguistics Website.
Picture by Siggito http://www.flickr.com/photos/siggito/2218711219/

7th International Congress for ELT Managers and Directors of Studies

We would like to thank you all for sharing rewarding moments with us at the ABS' 7th International Congress for ELT Managers and Directors of Studies.



It is always a pleasure to meet Movie Guide users ready to give their enthusiastic feedback, and also make new friends.

The Producers: A New Movie Guide

We are delighted to announce the release of a new Movie Guide, this time based on the film “The Producers” .



For those of you who enjoy teaching through music, this Movie Guide is a perfect combination of both: teaching material and music.
Also, for Business English teachers, there are 4 different Lesson Plans prepared to work with adults in working situations.

With a total of 14 Lesson Plans, this Movie Guide based on “The Producers” caters for all levels and ages. We really hope you can enjoy this guide together with your students, be them teenagers or adults. We are looking forward to your comments and feedback.

Movie Guide 23 based on the film "Hitch"

Do you fancy dancing?
Watch this clip from "Hitch" and think what you can do with it to enjoy English with your students.

After watching the clip, you may have a lot of different ideas on how to use it in a classroom and we would really appreciate if you share them with all Movie Guide users.

Here, our suggestions for elementary students.
Every movement Alex does has a funny name that students will easily remember. You can encourage the bravest to dance while learning parts of the body.
Go over our lesson plan and enjoy putting it into practice.

Hitch Scene 15 - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Hitch Scene 15

You will find this and other amusing clips in the Official Website of the movie.

The complete Movie Guide based on "Hitch" has 16 lesson plans to work with different scenes and different levels. Check the Index and see if it matches your needs.

What did you do last Saturday 14th June?

We participated in the APIBA Annual Seminar. This year, the seminar focused on “Screens and Learners: What teachers need to know to meet 21st-century students’ needs: computers, DVDs, TV, Cell phone, MP3s, MP4s, iPods, etc.”


In our workshop, we shared tips on how to design lesson plans to work with movies in the EFL/ESL classroom.

We were very pleased, and it was a really rewarding session, where we could also meet colleagues and old friends.