Film Circles
Scaffolding Speaking for EFL
Students
What is a Film Circle activity?
A Film Circle is a structured group project where five students are assigned different roles to perform according to their abilities and interests. Each student in the group has to analyze a film from a different perspective and present conclusions. Every role is designed around specific activities that are completed before, while, and after watching a film.
The process is scaffolded—at every stage the activities include contextual support to build on background knowledge and make understanding easier, including the use
of worksheets with graphic organizers, visual representations, word banks, and sentence starters. Without this scaffolding, the project would not have been possible. For example, before the film students learn relevant vocabulary and discuss a preview of what they are going to see. While watching the film, students practice basic listening and reading skills. After viewing the film, group members engage in cooperative learning as they share with each other the information related to their role assignments; this exchange ensures
that each student contributes to the discussion and practices speaking.
Example:
We chose the movie Goal! The Dream Begins (Cannon 2006). This is the story of a Mexican boy who lives illegally in the United States. His dream is to be a professional football player, but he suffers from asthma. He is given the chance to play for Newcastle United, where, after facing many challenges, he succeeds. This film worked perfectly for our students because the majority of them are football fans, and the message of perseverance is inspiring for young people. Assigning five student roles for a Film Circle.
The different roles played by the students are a major component of the Film Circle: the Designer, the Soundtrack Analyzer, the Vocabulary Enricher, the Questioner, and the Checker. These roles compel students to pay attention before, while, and after viewing the film. Our students were not used to speaking English, so it was important to include scaffolding techniques in each part of the task (Peregoy and Boyle 2005). Student contributions are important to achieve a complete discussion of the film during group work, and the following five roles successfully get everyone involved.
1. The Designer:
The student with the Designer role summarizes the entire film through graphic representation of the main scenes. This role uses visual intelligence, sequential thinking, and oral summarizing skills. The task is to create pictures that illustrate a timeline of the plot and contain corresponding sentences about what was happening at each point in the film. The Designer is given a worksheet with a timeline and blank boxes for the pictures that have labels such as “Santiago tries out for Newcastle United.” A word bank is also included for language support, with connecting words like next, then, and after this. We created this role for our Film Circle to give students who learn visually a chance to work with pictures and to reinforce the other students’ understanding of the plot during the discussion.
2. The Soundtrack Analyzer:
In the role of the Soundtrack Analyzer, the student uses a worksheet to take notes about the bands, songs, and styles of music from the film to promote group discussion. Apart from that, the Soundtrack Analyzer relates the style of music to specific scenes in the film. Thus, this role matches the emotions shown in scenes from the film with music played at those specific moments and shares that information with the group. The worksheet used by the Soundtrack Analyzer includes a graphic organizer containing certain scenes juxtaposed against a word bank describing emotions and musical styles, along with sentence starters about music to help take notes.
3. The Vocabulary Enricher:
The Vocabulary Enricher role is taken from Fink’s (2011) lesson plan, and the task is to classify key words from the film and share them with members of the group. As an adaptation for lower-level students, we used a handout with circles representing various themes from the film, and the student had to discover words related to each theme. For example, if the concept on the handout is football, the student might write the words player, sports agent, and football. The English subtitle function helps the Vocabulary Enricher to both listen and see new words, which helps the student complete the worksheet. The new vocabulary is shared with the group members, who benefit from learning new vocabulary in context.
4. The Questioner:
Another role from Fink (2011) is the Discussion Director, which we call the Questioner, a role that directs the student to create questions for members of the group. The Questioner asks questions to get information and promote group discussion about the film. As an adaptation for lower-level students, we gave the Questioner a graphic organizer showing different parts of the film and a list of topics to help form questions, as well as a guide to create basic questions and start a conversation, such as the sentence starters “I think ________” and “It seemed that ________.”
5. The Checker:
As the name indicates, the Checker evaluates the contributions of each group member. We found this role to be very important in our context since students need structure and accountability in order to work in groups without direct teacher supervision. On a worksheet, the Checker completes specific information about how the group worked and notes the strengths and weaknesses of each member’s participation in the group discussion. The Checker uses a worksheet to check the accuracy of other group members’ observations, including a graphic organizer and sentence starters related to the film’s main ideas. The Checker is responsible for participating in group discussions to get sufficient speaking practice, and he or she also has to use notes and the worksheet to give oral feedback to group members. This role promotes peer checking and autonomous learning.
Pre-viewing activity:
As a preparation activity, we studied the textbook vocabulary and activities related to sports; this preparation helped the students understand the film better when they watched it. Students were also pre-taught\ vocabulary from the film through pictures and examples, and they were told that specific words would be useful during the project. A cloze activity was useful to preteach the vocabulary: students were given a script of the movie trailer where several deleted words were replaced by blank lines. As they watched the trailer, the students had to read and listen in order to fill in the missing words. This listening activity helps prepare them to understand the film when they watch it and gives them written support for some of the concepts they will encounter in the film. Since the students are at a low level of proficiency, this extra support is necessary to make the language they will hear comprehensible.
Viewing activity:
In the second class, the students watch the film with English subtitles, which were used to support students’ listening with a written representation of the words. While watching, each student fulfills his or her assigned role and pays attention to the language and the concepts of the film. Students will be watching and listening for different information that will be shared later during group work. Although we did not expect our students to understand every word of the film, we did expect them to understand the plot, the major
scenes, the order of events, the characters, and the emotions associated with each event. This expectation was communicated explicitly so that students did not waste valuable class time trying to understand every detail. This approach resulted in added practice in the important skills of reading and listening for main ideas.
Post-viewing activity:
In the third and last class the students worked in their groups, taking turns to present the information they gathered and participate in a discussion of the film they had seen. The discussion was very basic, often with students asking and answering simple questions or reading their observations out loud. As our students progress, we hope to make the activity appropriate for a more advanced level by taking out some of the supports and encouraging students to use more creativity in their roles to express ideas and opinions, and to enrich the overall discussion.
Results of the Film Circle project:
To determine the effectiveness of the Film Circle for addressing our classroom needs and promoting oral interaction in English, we evaluated qualitative data from the students’ completed worksheets, the teacher observations, and the students’ reflections on the activity.