Using Movie Soundtracks in the EFL ESL Classroom

Using films and movies in class is a great way to encourage students to learn more language, so if you use them a lot then this site will be handy for you.


It's called MoMupl and it searches a database of movie sound tracks to help you find all the songs and music from films. You just type in the title of the movie and then click on the results to get a full list of the music tracks from that movie


You can then just play any of the tracks you want to hear in the browser.

This is a great tool that you can combine with the work you do on movies. Music is a very strong aid to memory, so you can use the music to prompt students to remember or it can just enhance the atmosphere of your lesson.

You can use this with students in a number of ways.

• Find the sound track for a movie your students have been studying and play different tracks, then ask if they can remember what was happening in the part of the movie when this music was playing.
• Use sounds tracks before the students watch the movie. Play them various clips and see what they can predict about the movie from the music. Get the students to create their own movie scenario from the different tracks.
• Get students to find a sound clip from their favourite movie and tell others about it in class.
• Use sound tracks from movies as the back ground for story telling.
• Give students some exerts from movie scripts (download scripts from Drew's Script-O-Rama). Get them to read 4 or 5 short dialogues then play them a short exert from a sound track and see if they can match the sound track to the movie script.

I like MoMupl because it combines couple of my passions (music and film) and even if you don't use it with your students, it's still useful for finding out who it was that wrote the music you liked in the film that you watched.

I hope you find it useful.

• Here you can find activities for EFL ESL students that use music.

Related links:

• Animated Music Videos for EFL
• Get the Stars to Sing Your Students' Words
• Write a Music Video Review
• Spot Talent for your Record Label
• Can Music Aid Memory of Text?
• Karaoke with a Social Network
• Another Great New Karaoke Site
• Great New Karaoke Site

Best

Nik Peachey

A Database of Film Scripts

Something that's always handy to have as either reading materials, support for video lessons or for drama projects, is access to up to date film scripts, so The Internet Movie Script Database is a great one to keep in your bookmarks.


It has quite a few up-to-date movies that are reasonably easy to access. You can search for a particular name or browse by genre or by alphabetical listing.

There's a landing page with a few ads on before you get to the actual script link, but one you get to the script it's reasonably easy to print or copy for you students.


As I said, there are lots of ways you can use these scripts:

• Get students to learn and act them out
• get students to read parts of the script and try to imaging the way the actor would say the lines (what kinds of emotions they would express through the words etc) then watch the films and compare.
  
• Get students to watch the film and follow + analyse language
• Get students to listen and mark on any features of pronunciation
• Get students to listen the film and try to imitate pronunciation and record themselves
• Use small parts as reading activities
• You could cut and paste the script into something like CuePrompter and get them to read lines from it that way.
  

Scripts like this add a new dimension to reading activities because they use spoken language and screen / stage direction that push students to imagine and visualise how things would happen and be communicated visually on film.

I hope you and your students enjoy them. Here you can find activities for exploiting movies

Related links:

• Drama project tools
• Subtitling your video clips
• Transcribed Videos for EFL ESL
• Using Product Reviews
• Free Educational TV Channels
• Open source video animation
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Things You Can Do With Your WebCam 1
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Lesson plan Top 10 Cartoons for Children’s Rights

Best

Nik Peachey