A good way to learn Italian is by watching Italian movies. When the communicative approach in learning was developed, experts understood the enormous potential of cinema as an educational tool. Studies have been done on how teachers should use movies in class.
Movies as educational tools
What are the advantages of using movies as educational tools? Let’s explore them.
- First of all, movies provide students with sociolinguistical, cultural and pragmatic information.
- Movies also consist of authentic material that reflects the living language of a culture. Therefore they are easy to use and to adapt. Students come into direct contact with the real language in given situations, with a variety of registers, dialects, slangs and pronunciations.
- Movies express the historical context and make understanding easier by means of images, tones of voice, sounds and non-verbal language. It also reflects the reality, society and culture of a country.
- Being the mirror of a country’s society and culture, a movie can also stimulate intercultural exchange between students.
- With movies, students can study non-verbal aspects of a language: gestures, positioning, facial expressions. Indeed, these are all elements not to be found in a textbook.
- Movies stimulate multi-sensory learning and make study possible on verbal and visual codes.
- Lastly, movies stimulate pleasure-based motivation which is the strongest and most effective type of motivation in learning a language.
And now let’s have fun watching a wonderful Italian movie! Click here and to find a movie you might be interested in.
If you are interested in other useful learning tools, click here to find out about the use of Italian songs.
