English through Film

English through Film offers language teachers at secondary schools and higher-education institutions the opportunity to use film as a starting point for improving the spoken English skills of their students. Reading and writing are also addressed, but to a lesser extent.

Twenty classroom activities based on a total of thirty English-language feature films have been proposed. The idea is that teachers do the activity on the film as it is presented in the book, but they can also try out the same activity on another film discussed. Depending on their level, the students can also be asked to organize the activity, but in connection with yet another movie in English through Film, or apply one of the other activities proposed in the book to the film the teacher has selected. Even a film not discussed in the book can be dealt with.

For each movie presented, debating questions have been added about cinematographic issues (lighting, style, camera angle, editing and musical score) as well as topics linked to the, often controversial, themes. Answers to many of the debating questions have been suggested on the website.

For each title, a film fact sheet has been provided, with general information about its year of release, director, cast and trivia, which the teacher and students can discuss as a starting point.

There is a short film terminology glossary at the end of the book, explaining most of the cinema jargon used throughout English through Film, as well as a table with genres and subgenres.

English through Film is intended for teachers and learners who want to step out of their comfort zones and improve their mastery of the English language in an original way, leading, more generally, to a better understanding of Anglo-Saxon culture. The level aimed at is broad enough to span B1 to C1. The activities can be adapted to virtually any level.

Timothy Byrne spent two years teaching refugees in Brussels prior to working overseas, first in Gabon, then in China. He is currently at the Institut des Langues Vivantes of UCLouvain, Belgium, where he is involved in several online writing modules as well as the CLIL-project, which aims at helping UCL’s Polytechnic to transition to teaching in English. He also has a development program in Vietnam. He published an article on assessing writing in CALL, has set up a film-club and co-organized several film festivals at UCLouvain as well as published Business English Writing Skills with ACCO in 2014.