Unit 3

Screen Test


 

It's time to give Movie Talk a screen test, so you can see for yourself how it works.

As explained in the previous unit, a teacher using the Movie Talk technique narrates the action and scenes of a movie, and paraphrases dialogue as needed. The purpose of this is to provide the students with large quantities of high-quality, interesting comprehensible input, which is what they need in order to acquire language.

Movie Talk is demonstrated below, using two segments from the beginning of the movie "Places in the Heart."


 Segment 1: Preview

Typically, in Movie Talk, the entire movie is used.

Perhaps the most common approach is to present the movie in fairly short, coherent segments. Each segment is first previewed without interruption or comment, so the students can become familiar with the scenes and get some idea of the content.

The clip in the window on the right shows the first few minutes of the movie, which include the credits plus a few glimpses of places and people that will play major roles in the story.

Please watch it now, then scroll down to "Segment 1: Narration," where a sample narration for the same clip is demonstrated.

(To start the clip, just click on the image. The clip will start playing and the video controls will appear.)
 
  Segment 1: Narration

After presenting the segment, the teacher replays it and narrates the scenes, pausing as needed. It is this narration that provides most of the comprehensible input for the students.

While narrating, a teacher will often point out the precise parts of the scene that are being referred to, so the meaning of the narration will be clear to the students. A teacher may also pantomime or otherwise reinforce meanings. (We cannot do these things in this demo, but you can easily imagine for yourself what you could point to or pantomime in each scene.)

Please watch this part of the demo now, then scroll down to the next part.
 
  Segment 2: Preview

The story begins with this segment. Again, the teacher first shows the segment without pauses or comments. Please watch it now.
 
  Segment 2: Narration

And now, a possible way to narrate the segment.