Movie Technique
The Focal Skills Movie Technique (FSMT), also referred to as the Narrative/Paraphrase Approach, is a language-teaching technique originally developed for use in Focal Skills programs. The purpose of FSMT is to provide large quantities of high-interest comprehensible input (see Monitor Theory), which has been identified by researchers, primarily Stephen Krashen, as a necessary element for successful language acquisition.
A teacher using FSMT shows a movie to students, describing the scenes as they occur and paraphrasing dialogue when necessary to help the students understand the story. The narrations and paraphrases are meant to be at a level of language that is just a bit beyond the students’ current proficiency (i+1; see Monitor Theory).
The work of the teacher in this process is vital, as the dialogue in the movie is not likely to be intelligible to the students for whom FSMT is intended. The teacher’s task is to use the images, actions, and plot of the movie as supports for the students’ comprehension of the language produced by the teacher.
Read more about this topic: Focal Skills
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