A Study On The Role Of Movies And TV Plays In English Classroom In Junior Middle School

In English classrooms, many teachers try to use movies and TV plays to stimulate students' interest for language learning activities and improve their oral English. This thesis is a report of an experiment on the effects of improving students' interest and their oral English through movies and TV plays.In the thesis, the author first briefly introduces theories of teaching oral English and the advantages of movies and TV plays as the carrier of language materials for oral English. In order to study the role of movies and TV plays as the carrier of language materials and their effects on improving students' oral English, a semester's experiment was conducted. Two groups of 80 junior middle school students were chosen as subjects of the study, 40 in the experimental group and 40 in the control group.The experimental group adopted some movies and TV plays in the teaching, while the control group used the traditional textbook-based language materials. Various activities for the experimental group were designed with the appropriate movies and TV plays according to the textbook to make students involved in the language learning process. For the control group, the teaching strictly sticks to the content specified by the textbook.The data were collected through two questionnaires, a pre-test and a post-test of oral English. Before the experiment, the first questionnaire surveyed students' interest, and a pre-test of oral English for both groups was conducted. After the experiment the second questionnaire and a post-test of oral English for both groups were conducted. All the data were processed by the software SPSS.The results of the experiment show that using movies and TV plays in the English classroom can make students more interested than the traditional textbook-based classroom teaching. Moreover, students taught with movies and TV plays perform better in the post-test of oral English. Most students in the experimental group hold positive attitudes toward teaching English with the aid of movies and TV plays. These conclusions will offer some help for English teachers to use movies and TV plays to improve students' interest in learning English and their oral English.