Teaching Pronunciation Through Mimicking Movie Performances
Using movies to learn English or other languages can be a rewarding and entertaining process, but students may require guidance in finding effective methods as even keen students may lean too much on subtitles. In this presentation, a project will be discussed wherein university-level Japanese students were required to choose an actor and scene from a film that they wanted to mimic and thoughtfully work through the process to do so, taking care to focus on aspects such as intonation and shortening words. Students needed to transcribe all the lines from their chosen actor in the scene, and then analyze the dialogue closely for performance quirks, including quickening pace, rhythm, and volume. Students then recorded their performance and submitted said recording alongside the original scene for evaluation. The teacher modeled the activity in Japanese first, illustrating weaknesses in relying too much on subtitles, and providing visual feedback by presenting the scene through edited slides along with his recorded performance. This presentation will describe strengths and weaknesses in the project, student outcomes, and reflections on how to improve the project. Recommendations for what technology or apps to use for each step of the project will also be included.