Conversation session 1
Intermediate, B1 level

Description

In this session students are provided with fluency practice in the context of cinema, movie awards and criticism. Some useful vocabulary and functional language relevant to the target language is also introduced.

Materials

No materials added to this plan yet.

Main Aims

  • To provide fluency speaking practice in a discussion in the context of movie evaluation

Subsidiary Aims

  • To provide clarification of descriptive movie genre lexis in the context of movie evaluation
  • To provide clarification of language used for expressing opinion and criticism in the context of movie evaluation

Procedure

Warmer/Lead-in (5-6 minutes) • To set lesson context and engage students

- Introduce yourself to the ss and get acquainted with them. - Is Netflix popular in Armenia? How about cinema? - Who watched the Oscars? What is your opinion about it? - What are some of your favorite movies?

Exposure (14-15 minutes) • To provide a model of production expected in coming tasks through reading/listening

- Show pictures of movie genres elicit the genres. - Elicit the words describing feelings and atmosphere that are associated to each movie genre. - Elicit characteristics of a good horror movie -How is the sense of fear created in such movies? -What are some of the techniques to create a scary atmosphere? -How would you describe a good horror movie? -What are some of the repetitive and unwanted features that you have seen a lot in these movies? - Explain how Saw the movie has an interesting story and an effective soundtrack but it is not visually appealing. - Play the extracted highlight footages from The room and ask what the students think about it. -Then Elicit the negative aspects of the movie by asking if they see something wrong with the scenes of the movie. -Explain that the movie features a lot of poor acting. However despite that the movie has been popular. -Elicit some of the speculated reasons for its popularity -Explain that the movie has been popular for its bad qualities and that such qualities have turned it into a comedy which was not the original intended genre for the movie.

Useful Language (9-10 minutes) • To highlight and clarify useful language for coming productive tasks

- Introduce some words and phrases that are appropriate to the context. Do so by playing the game hot-seat. Example words and phrases: Soundtrack Atmospheric (creating mood) Ambience (the character and atmosphere of a place) Nostalgic (e.g. The great Gatsby) Cinematography Script Plot Box office hit Hilarious Visually appealing Genuine acting

Productive Task(s) (19-20 minutes) • To provide an opportunity to practice target productive skills

- Topic: Discuss and evaluate a movie of choice. Cues: 1- What is the genre of the chosen movie? 2- What are the characteristics of a good movie in that genre? How would you define the genre? What is typical in this genre? 3- What do you think has made this movie successful in particular? 4- Is this movie generic and similar to many others from its genre or is it unique in its own way? 5-What do you like about the movie yourself? What strikes your interest? 6- Which parts would you change? what are its weaknesses? - Topic: Discuss and decide which movies belong to the top five movies of all time. Cues: 1- Brainstorm some of the movies that you think can potentially be in the top five. 2- Describe the atmosphere in those movies 3- Point out your favorite character and favorite scenes from the movies. 4- Name some of the strong and some of the weak aspects of each movie. 5- List the factors that you agree are important for a movie's success (i.e. What makes a movie a success). 6- Determine whether the proposed/selected movies fulfil your criteria for success. - Topic: Burglary plot (role-play) Cues: 1- Ask how the students would plan it. 2- Then ask them to come up with a scenario and a screenplay (time, location, people involved, events' sequence, dialogues, interactions and emotional states) 3- How would you put the set together for filming (lighting, visual effects, camera angles/movements, sound volumes, music) - Topic: Discuss the influences of the movies. Cues: 1- What kind of effects do they have on different cultures? 2- What are some of the cases in which they have been used to educate people? 3- Can they have negative impacts on societies? How? 4- Should people pay more attention to the messages carried by the movies and evaluate movies accordingly? If so how much?

Feedback and Error Correction (8-9 minutes) • To provide feedback on students' production and use of language

- Provide quick feedback on contents/result/outcomes. Explain the strong points and discuss/elicit some better approaches with students. - Pinpoint the generic errors by eliciting the correct forms. - Based on observations write some sentences on the board that are wrong and ask the students to correct them.

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