A Study On College Students' English Learning Assisted By English Films

With the constant development of society, traditional college English curriculum neither meets the requirements of the new college English teaching reforms, nor the status of the increasingly frequent international exchanges. As a new type of learning materials, the characters of English films make them fit for the needs of college students' English learning. They have excellent pictures and wonderful accompanying essays, providing us a relatively fresh and carefree environment with various performance means.Based on the above situation, this thesis aims to investigate college students' English learning assisted by English films, to explore whether English films can assist college students' English learning and find out the role of teachers in college students' English learning assisted by English films.The research was made by two steps.In the first step, a questionnaire survey is made in order to present the universality of college students' using English films in English learning. The subjects are 280 students who come from 12 departments in Grade 2009 in Xi'an Technological University. The researcher did the survey in March 2010. The second step is based on the results of the first step; the researcher serves as a trainer being responsible for questionnaires surveys. The researcher carefully selects 12 typical English films to train 16 freshmen of English majors in Xi'an Technological University, and then makes tracking questionnaire surveys which last for a semester from early April to the end of June in 2010. During the training, one English film was shown by the researcher in each class, two times in one type, and uses the different teaching methods in every two classes, they are direct screening, brief explanation before the film, detailed exposition before the film, dub after the film, role-play after the film; students should fill up one questionnaire survey after two training and accept the researcher's interview.Both qualitative and quantitative analysis methods are used, the results of data are explained by figures and tables with the help of Microsoft Excel 2007. The main results are:(1) English films can well assist college students to learn English. According to the investigation and study, better teaching result has gained by applying English films to college students' English learning. It can improve college students' learning interest as well as speaking and listening abilities, helping college students to know more about the cultural background knowledge, and the extensive themes of English films can enable college students to learn different relevant professional knowledge.(2) Teachers' guidance is important and useful. According to different themes of English films, teachers should choose appropriate teaching methods to explain cultural background and related knowledge, and to guide them to learn key words and practice listening and speaking skills. At the same time, teachers should carefully select teaching materials. In order to cultivate the students' learning interest, teachers need to choose simple and understandable materials with slower dialogue conversation which are popular with students at the early stage of English teaching, such as cartoon and love films, and then select difficult teaching materials.