Leaving aside my glorious job as a teacher of the French-speaking people, I personally enjoy watching French-language movies in my spare time.
It can even be said that through my fondness for French films, my interest in learning French has become more and more intense.
But whenever my students ask me:
"Teacher, do I usually watch more French movies to improve my French level?"
I would tell him very honestly:
" Helpful, but not as big as you think, at least not as obvious."
Why?
The reason is very simple, first think about how people usually watch movies:
Lying on the sofa, left hand potato chips right hand Coke, life is beautiful.
After reading it, I asked you what you read, and you replied:
This girl likes the boy, but the boy can't forget his ex-girlfriend, this girl is very sad and accepts the pursuit of another boy, but the boy wakes up and realizes that his favorite is not the ex-girlfriend but the girl, so he regrets it..... (100,000 words omitted below)
Emmmm ……
Admit it, you're not learning French, you're having fun under the guise of learning French.
Most of the students I meet don't really know how to find what they really need to learn from a movie with a lot of dialogue and many scenes.
At the end of the day, if you want to learn a language from a movie, you should use it as your learning material rather than your usual entertainment.
You need to master a set of learning methods, and you should also choose your French film correctly.
When you go to the movie with the learning method, the entertainment effect of the movie may be weakened, but you can really learn a lot from the scenes and grounded dialogue of the movie, and even pay attention to the local culture and the local way of thinking behind the movie.
It can be said that:
Watching a movie in the right way gives you a language boost that's worth watching 100 movies in general.
But how do you go about watching a movie the way you learn?
First, you have to pick a suitable movie.
There are some movies that you may personally like very much, but they are actually not suitable for use as learning materials.
For example, very professional films, such as forensics, crime, science fiction and so on.
Such a movie may seem interesting, but some of the strange words and characteristic scene expressions in some of the professional fields may not be used for a lifetime.
There are also some films with distinct characteristics of the times, in which the colloquial dialogue may not be enough to be lifelike, and even some of the expressions of the characters may be too "outdated" because they are in line with the characteristics of that era.
Imagine a foreigner learning Chinese use "The Biography of Zhen Huan" as a learning material and you will understand what I mean.
I have a European friend Chinese named "Kong Ming".
Since I became obsessed with watching the children's pinyin version of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", I usually call myself "in the next", WeChat asked him if he was there, he replied: "Zhuge Kongming is here." ”
Laugh to the stomachache hahahahahaha
The selected movie must have a more daily scene, more dialogue, clear character pronunciation, no strange words, and the plot is close to life.
Okay, the movie is picked, and here's what we learn from the dialogue.
But as soon as you press the play button and watch the characters come and go, A says blablabla, B says bla, A says blablabla.
Why do these people talk so much? I can't hear it?
Download a line text online, search for half a day, and it took a lot of effort to find the first half.
The first half alone has more than 10 pages!
Okay, start looking up words, reading texts, and listening to movies while reading them.
After listening, most of your half day has passed.
When I ask you what you've learned, your head is still empty.
Watching more than 10 pages of movie dialogue, my head hurts.
Don't say your head hurts, I want to do this and my head hurts.
I must correct a mistake that is easy for everyone to make, that is, to try to learn the dialogue of the whole movie at once, so that all the dialogue is familiar with the heart and can blurt out.
Swallowing dates, it is easy to eat and easy to choke.
So what to do?
Quite simply, you don't have to be familiar with the dialogue of an entire movie, but you can pick out some clips that contain authentic expressions and commonly used utterances.
Only learn the text of these fragments, but to learn to learn to be refined, to learn a sentence must be able to use one example and three times to the real scene!
You have to have not only an input process but also an output process.
Just like the water in the pool, no fresh water into and no water out of this pool of water is dead, only there is a coming and going, in order to make the words and expressions in your mind "live", in order to be handy to use the real life.
In addition to repeatedly imitating the character's voice intonation, experiencing the emotional changes in this sentence, and memorizing these dialogues, you also need to practice, and you need a creative process.
After the creation is complete, you also need a person with a higher level than you to help you correct the sound, to help you see if the sentences you create based on the film scene using these dialogue sentence patterns are appropriate and smooth, and the expression is authentic.
If I say that you are still a bit in the clouds, I suggest you can directly listen to my new online "drama chasing class".
The so-called drama chasing is actually using a movie as a learning material to learn the dialogue of the movie, focusing on practicing listening and improving the spoken language.
What about breaking through?
Haha, this is the inspiration I got from the game, I told the other teachers, they all think it is quite interesting.
Let's talk about the movie first, the film I chose is a french fresh literary film - "Paris Sleepless", this movie actually has the original novel, called "Ensemble, c'est tout".
I also read the novel before looking for the movie, and in the course, I will also intersperse the novel fragments corresponding to the movie scenes to give you writing exercises.
I like this novel because the characters are portrayed and described very vividly, the vocabulary used is not complicated, and it does not require a high level of French to be understood.
The dialogue in the film is also relatively simple, especially close to life, and there are many authentic French expressions.
The plot of the film itself is very warm, making people look at the kind that is hot in their hearts, and the scene setting and character personality of the whole movie are also very french film style.
In addition to the dialogue, you can also catch a glimpse of French folklore, small details of social culture.
Then there's the break.
I selected 15 scenes with more dramatic conflicts and were suitable for practicing listening and speaking, and designed 3 levels for each scene.
● Level 1:
First give you 4 stills, while giving prompt information and keywords, your punch card task is to imagine the dialogue of the characters according to the stills, keywords, and scenes.
This level is aimed at oral language practice, so let everyone make full use of their existing knowledge reserves and warm up the key content they are about to learn.
My teaching assistants and I will correct the sound and share more accurate expressions online
It's a training of imagination, a bit like the picture-making dialogue in elementary school Chinese class haha.
● Level 2:
The audio of the excerpted scene is for you to listen to.
This level is listening practice, and the spoken and written French are very different.
Everyday French people will be accustomed to legato, swallowing and provincial words when speaking, subtitles typed out you may fully understand the meaning, but it is not easy to understand when you actually listen.
I set up listening exercises based on the content of the listening, mainly in the form of filling in the blanks and answering questions.
The exercise content is mainly aimed at asking questions about the authentic expressions, keywords, and key information in the dialogue of the movie, which is equivalent to a positive understanding of the key content.
● Level 3:
I will give you the corresponding clip video of the movie, and at the same time give the original text of the listening, and the corresponding paragraph excerpts in the novel. You need to imitate the dialogue (spoken language) and copy the beautiful plot of the novel.
This part is the "excerpt and recitation imitation" that you are familiar with.
But the effect of reaching the third level is completely different from the effect of copying and imitating as soon as you come up.
At this time, you practice the common sentences and expressions of different scenes through the first level, and understand the dialogue of the characters in the second level to feel the voice tone of the characters, and at this level, you can completely repeat the words of the characters and understand the appropriate use of these sentences.
Coupled with the recitation of the novel paragraphs, I have practiced listening, speaking, reading and writing.
In the whole process, I want to think of sentence patterns + listening practice to fill in the blanks + imitate dialogue, which is equivalent to three repetitions of key information, and I will definitely learn something~
Reading a novel alone may be easy for a french beginner to give up, and it is a bit boring, but combined with the movie, you understand this part of the plot and then read the novel, it is easy to understand, and the enthusiasm for reading will also increase.