Case study - Pripotocni High School
Working with Mooveez in an elective English language seminar.
As part of this elective seminar, students work inside the app with a range of selected titles such as Mirror Mirror, Yes Prime Minister, Pulp Fiction and Hacking the System.
Goals
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To encourage the ability to express yourself in English (by using written tasks - conversation work in lessons is in small groups)
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To support listening through reading at home and thereby to intensify and structure contact with authentic language
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To develop critical thinking through analysis of the story, its characters as well as the way the story is told
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To broaden knowledge of the English language (eg. what is slang and what it looks like, what is Received Pronunciation, vulgarisms, colloquialisms, idioms, collocations etc.)
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To work on visual literacy and the ability to 'read' a film
The impact of working with the app
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As a result of the translations inside the app, I can work with this class of senior high schoolers on the complex dialogue of Yes, Prime Minister and then immediately follow up with a discussion of the Cold War and nuclear disarmament. Or discuss slang and analyse idioms from Pulp Fiction scenes.
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In every lesson students select idioms and useful phrases for communicating which they turn into flashcards and then learn.
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Working with the dialogue in detail in the split screen allows for an in depth analysis of the plot and the characters.
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The students gradually started doing their homework which consisted of watching one lesson of the movie.
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The students realised that it's not enough to just read the dialogue and so they also listen to the scene inside the lesson.
Results
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Students learned to focus on details, discuss, analyse, evaluate, argue and think critically (what is the purpose of individual scenes and various specific situations)
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They have developed their vocabulary, learned new phrases, idioms and collocations, and they can also distinguish between what is useful and less useful. By recording themselves, they have gradually lost their shyness as they try to keep up the pace, rhythm and correct pronunciation. They can recognise the importance of speech skills in each scene – they can distinguish formal and informal language, the power of vulgarisms as well as body language.
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The students have learned to write reviews - their structure and format and to choose the most important information about the story, characters and individual scenes while at the same time being able to think about and analyse in detail their meaning and importance.
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They have thoroughly learned to work with the Mooveez app - to quickly find individual details and to work with all the tasks and possibilities which the app allows
An educator's opinion of the app
Students can return to individual scenes whenever they want and practise everything until they achieve 100%. They can also record themselves and check for correct pronunciation.
The flashcards which they can create as they watch the movie are great (they simply click, there is no need to write anything). They are automatically archived and the students can practise with them whenever they like (the cards are in a flashcard format which means that they have a sentence in English on one side and on the other side there is an exact translation from the movie into Czech).
In the process of watching the movie, they can stop it at any time and simultaneously watch subtitles in English as well as the translation into Czech. And if the students don't want to see the translation, they can use a bookmark to hide the English or the Czech text. The student is able to quickly memorise various verbal expressions and colloquial phrases in a way which is not at all forceful.
"My students quickly fell in love with Mooveez and they continue to get better at a faster rate, both in their language skills as well as in finding information in the script."
Hanka Dědková,
English teacher, Přípotoční High School
My students quickly liked the app and they are getting faster at improving both their language skills as well as in finding information within the script. They can immediately find any important scenes in the movie which they then analyse. Not only do they improve their vocabulary, but they also learn to think and argue critically, which is very important today and not just in foreign language teaching.
The work in the seminar has become more and more interesting with each lesson thanks to assistance from Mooveez expert Martina Limburg, She created projects for the seminar students which they can work on individually or in groups and due to her professional approach, we have been able to motivate the students and to focus and direct them towards acquiring the individual skills mentioned in the introduction to this review of the seminar.