As a language teacher, especially for Teaching as a Foreign Language teacher, often find difficulties in teaching. Teachers should not only struggle with the material, but also with the media that suit the lessons. Since teaching English is somehow a tricky job, they really need to pay attention to preparing the learning tool as well as possible.
In fact, teaching English in real life experiences so many difficulties. According to Akbari (2015), English teaching, especially in the context of EFL (English as a Foreign Language), faces the challenges such as unsupported environment for learning English, not knowing how to start learning English, and problems related to the textbook, assessment, and others. As mentioned before, the preparation of materials was also a problem for the teachers because they have to adapt to the students’ needs and also to the students’ preferences.
In addition, many students – especially in Indonesia – are afraid to learn English. Cited by CNN Indonesia, in one of Indonesia’s private junior high school, even some students have a phobia on learning English. It is stated that one of the factors is because of the improper learning method. If this continues, the students’ ability to speak English will not improve.
So what should we do to overcome this?
Recently, we can use so many media to teach English. As technology is developing rapidly these days, there are so many ways to use technology to make learning more colourful. We can use the social media like Twitter or blog articles on the Internet as media learning. Another fun way to learn is through a film.
At present, there are so many movies that have a good story and can be the material to learn English. Some movies below can be a perfect material to learn English – as well as get a new insight from the message of the movie.
- Zootopia
It is one of the most popular animated films by Walt Disney. It tells the story of a rabbit named Judy Hopps who dreams of becoming a police officer. Judy wants to be the first rabbit police officer in a Zootopia – a world populated by anthropomorphic mammals. The story follows Judy’s journey to become a policeman and how she deals with discrimination because she is very small and all the policemen are big mammals.
Through this animation, we can learn the moral message of Judy’s journey along with the languages. The dialogue uses many idioms that can be a material to learn, along with other sentences that can be used to learn grammar.
- Coco
Still from the Disney Films collaboration with Pixar Animation, Coco can be a choice to watch while learning English. It depicts the story related to the Mexican tradition called “Dia de los Muertos” with a young boy named Miguel as the main character. It tells the journey of how Miguel fights for his dream of being a musician while his family is against him because of their family’s bad history with music.
This film has a slow and clear pronunciation so it is easy to follow. As well as learning English, we have also been introduced to Mexican culture, which is portrayed in a beautiful cinematography. The teacher could cut out some clips and show them in class as a medium to learn English or this film can also be a medium for self-learning.
- Harry Potter
You may be familiar with the Harry Potter series. Some of you might be a Potterhead – a name for the fans of Harry Potter. This film is a perfect choice for anyone interested in British accents. All the characters use British English, so it would be a perfect medium to improve your IELTS score. The dialogue is also varied and contains some meaningful quotes. There are 8 Harry Potter series and you can choose one to study. It is recommended that you start with the first series so that you can follow the plot more easily.