The importance of teaching through films and the intercultural process in the acquisition of a foreign language

Foreign languages teaching-learning process evolves a lot of stages teachers and students have to pass through in order to get a meaningful learning. One of the most important challenges students have to face is the “culture shock”. When someone is trying to learn a foreign language, finds that he or she has to learn the culture aspects that surround this language learning, it´s because each language belongs to a different culture, what makes it unique. Every culture has its own art pieces or art expressions, FILMS are examples of them. Also called movies, films are watched by lots of people from different cultures and they make those people change, in some ways, their thoughts about general life aspects. It happens because films are not exclusively art pieces but they are filled of intercultural content that emphasizes the differences between cultures in the matters of feelings, beliefs, and traditions, in some cases, even in the real life issues. Besides, films content a sort of elements which are useful for students to get through their own foreign language learning process, these elements are: narration, writing exposition, literary criticism, dialogue, description, poetry, dialects, slangs and languages differences related to writing and speaking features.

Notwithstanding, films provide the students some valuable advantages that allow them to encourage their foreign language learning, and trough their watching, students could be able to challenge their ideas by discussing them, all these, will lead to the improvement of the skills students need to develop a written or verbal composition in a successful way, and that´s because in some cases, films’ content can touch the students feelings and they identify themselves with them. These facts stimulate students wish for expressing these feelings by talking about their impressions at the end of the film and less often, they express them in a written way.

Teaching culture and English through films is not just a matter of feelings, they also help students to select their own opinions about different subjects and express them in a formal way. Besides, it is necessary to take into account that films provide an environment of challenging discussion by using controversial topics that allow students to express their points of view, sharing them with their friends and getting a conclusion about a specific issue related to the target culture. As an example of this, “feminism” can be used as a controversial topic, which can foster a discussion environment due to the different ways of thinking students have in any situation.

In teaching composition, teachers concern about the aspects of form and content and they take into account the fact of a book can generate many different styles of writing (opinions and feelings), that’s because films are an important tool in a foreign language teaching, they offer the students a better way to get a fusion between those contents and forms, simulating the reality by using actors and the camera instead of reading a book, it lets the students to transfer easily and directly their own writing styles, the correct use of words, placement of some phrases, among others.

In the same line of thinking, it can be added that watching a film is an excellent way to understand __ by stimulating the human senses __ many cultural differences between countries and even, between states into the same country. Students can watch and listen to a film in the same way they feel different sensations and get the main message film wants to convey, through the analysis of the cultural facts they watch on it.

Understanding foreign cultures embraces much more than just watching a film or reading a book related to them; this process also includes a direct contact with the target culture aspects or at least, a deep research about other cultures traditions, beliefs and lifestyles, because in that way, learners could be able to understand a sort of aspects related to the target cultures. Hence, watching a film and reading a book are very useful ways to appreciate differences between cultures, therefore, researchers have to considerate that a specific book or film just describes one person (the author) point of view, and just one opinion is not enough to establish a concrete statement about a specific culture. In any case, these resources help teachers and students through this learning process, because they give them a useful resource to compare cultures features.

Other cultures learning issue is emphasized and remarked because students need it to be able to built their own appreciation about the topic and, at the same time, to develop a tolerance for the differences between their own cultures and foreign ones, also, they could understand better their own culture aspects and realize that these are not neither the unique nor the best ones ways of thinking. Being intercultural embraces to look things from others perspectives and to see the world in a different way, understanding that any culture is exactly like other, as Bredella states: “being intercultural means to enhance our self-awareness as cultural beings. This makes us aware of the relativity of our beliefs and values…” This is not neither a short nor an easy process: students becomes intercultural little by little, because it is not easy to change beliefs and traditions they are accustomed to, so, the best teachers or tutors can do is try to instruct their students in the matters of other cultures, instead of making them change their ways of thinking, because if teachers do it in that way, they could create a confusion and even a “culture shock” into the students minds. Culture shock is related to understanding and adaptation problems that people face when they try to get into other cultures.

Students can comprehend cultural differences through books and films, because first ones give them the vocabulary needed to understand the foreign language and become good writers, and the second ones allow them to watch, to listen to and to feel cultural issues since environments, dialects and common phrases until feeling expressions in other cultures, films can show these and other different aspects, that could help them “to overcome their ethnocentric tendency to impose our categories and values on their behavior”.(Bredella, 2003). In other words, some people tend to think that their way of thinking is the best one and don’t take into account the others’ ideas, thinking they are such worthless. Sometimes, these “closed minded people” think the costumes they learnt were the best ones to behave into a society, which is very relative. If somebody wanted to choose or establish a “perfect culture”, would be in very serious problems. This idea cannot be conceived, because this person could take the best aspects of all cultures and built a new culture and even this way he or she couldn’t create such thing. The perfection is as relative as the acceptation of all cultural differences from the whole humanity. Every human being in this world is dissimilar to others, and this is because there are infinite opinions and points of view about the same topic. “Borat” the 2006 film, is a very nice example of this, because a man from Kajakstan travels to America to find that Americans have totally different cultural behaviors. Then, he passes through a sort of problems, but he finally adapts American culture to his own culture, and when he gets back to his town again, he makes some social changes in his community, which let people to understand they were so closed into their culture, that they couldn’t see beyond it, to discover some changes in their society rules could represent a very important improvement for their lives.

In the oncoming era of globalization, it is essential for foreign language curricula to include other countries cultural issues and give emphasis to them, because it is completely necessary for students to comprehend all cultures are different one another and if they want to learn a different language, they must immerse themselves into the other culture aspects, because it is really helpful through a foreign language acquisition. When someone tries to learn a different language, he or she has to differentiate between words or phrases used by speakers of his or her native language and words or phrases used by the target language speakers. For this reason, it is very important to insert these cultural issues into the foreign languages curricula and is a priority to teach them carefully to the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students.

As a conclusion, cultural facts and issues are a controversial topic worldwide, because it will be impossible to find two equal opinions about that theme. It is very important for foreign languages teachers to understand and to take into account these differences, to be able to teach these contents in an objective way. One of the ways that teachers can use to instruct their students about these cultural variations is by watching a film more than reading a book, this film has to include other cultures traditions, because in this way, students can express their own opinions and understand the multicultural issues in a better way.

Films are highly recommended to get this goal, that’s because it’s well known that teachers should give the students the opportunity to develop their skills in a foreign language trough watching films, because as it was said before, they stimulate people’s senses and allow them to internalize it better than if they were just reading a book, which just stimulate their vision and maybe, their imagination.

  

Now you can find an explication of the importance of all this resources to develop teaching into and out classrooms using media