Forrest Gump—Lesson Plan for Audio-visual English



Lesson Plan for Ten-minute Introduction to Audio-visual English

Students’ Level: (intermediate)

Students’ Age: 19-21

Students Number: 50

Class setting: EFL

Teaching Hour: 6 hours (Three 2-hour sessions)

Overview

This is the first class of Audio-visual English course. Students can learn language in a natural way when they are exposed to an authentic communication context. The instructor spends the first ten minutes to introduce students to this course, providing learners a preview on three two-hour sessions in the following weeks. Students will get pretty clear idea about what they are going to learn from this course. Then the instructor shows the feature movie Forrest Gump divided into three sections. During the process of showing the movie, the instructor discusses the language and cultural learning points. In the final session of this lesson, students are supposed to discuss some emotional questions in groups.

Language focus: Getting familiar with vocabularies about Oscar Awards

Culture focus: Getting a brief clue about the American culture and society during the 1960s-1980s

Objectives: The students will be able to

- learn how to use video to learn English.

- get a guideline of cultural and social background

Resources: PC, DVD, scripts

Reflection

Today’s young people grow up with YouTube and MySpace. The so-called e-generation is more readily to get the information online through structures built by sound and image files. They have had their minds and emotions shaped by media culture instead of books (Gregory, 2005.) Their way of thinking and reorganization of the world are more shaped by multi-media. Therefore, in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom, feature movie study is the most efficient way among the existing available methods to enhance moral and aesthetic development of learners.

Take the lesson based on Forrest Gump as an example, the learners are granted a peek at the hero’s life journey where Forrest learns to deal with not only the prejudice, hate, hope, fears and dreams of human nature but also life and death. Forrest is the embodiment of an era, an innocent at large in a world that is losing its innocence. His kind and loving heart knows what his limited IQ doesn’t enable him. Armed with his natural born virtues and tried to survive in the cruel world, Gump never allows his moral compass to shake. His triumphs become an inspiration to us all. What I am trying to do is to help students use the feature movie to learn another language as well as understand their lives.

In the lecture part of this lesson plan, I display the information on the musicians who represents different chapters in American culture with their photo profiles and the original soundtracks. Since they are classic, most of the learners know and love the songs and improve their oral skills by means of leaning to sing. Music’s ability can enrich personal lives and offer opportunities for self-actualization in terms of self-experience and self-growth (Kertz-welzel, 2005). Music study inserted in this lesson matches the theory of aesthetic development of human being.

Vivid audio and visual information provided by feature movies is able to impress learners deeply and increase their enthusiasm to learn the language of native speakers in the movies.

References

Gregory, Marshall. (2005), Turning Water into Wine: Giving Remote Texts Full Flavor for the Audience of Friends, College Teaching, v53 n3 p95 Sum 2005. 4 pp.

Kertz-welzel, Alexandra. (2005). In Search of the Sense and the Senses: Aesthetic Education in Germany and the United States, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 39, No. 3, Fall 2005.

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