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The 61 TEFLIN International Conference, UNS Solo 2014 MOVIE MAKING: A MORE EFFECTIVE AND FUN METHOD
IN TEACHING SPEAKING (An Empirical Study)
Susiati
Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta miss.society@gmail.com
Abstract: Having experienced several types of Speaking teaching methods, the writer finds a new more effective and fun method to foster students’ Speaking ability. Movie making is an activity beyond the classroom to create a movie containing the students’ drama with the topic given based on the syllabus which is then presented in front of the classroom. Movie making is more effective because in the movie, the students are required to give the subtitles in order to make the teacher easy to evaluate their pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary and make the other students clearly understand the words said in the movie. In 25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently, DuNeen (2013) suggests that successful teachers bring fun into the classroom. Movie making is also fun because the students feel unashamed (because recorded), happy and appreciated when their self-made movie gets responses from the other students such as laugh at comedy scenes. Beside the valuable purposes, movie making is a simple method, not like other rigid techniques which sometimes bother teachers instead of helping improve the learning process (Qoryaah, 2007). This method is very possible to be implemented in teaching Listening, Reading, and Writing.
Keywords:Movie Making, Effective Method, Fun Method, Teaching Speaking
Introduction
There are so many methods to teach English especially in Speaking skill. Teachers are now provided with many techniques to teach Speaking. In some occasions the methods used work for students, but in the others the teaching methods with certain rules seem like burdening the teachers to implement them in front of the class room since they must prompt to the rules. Qoryaah (2007), a teacher of a Senior High School, suggests that rigid teaching techniques sometimes bother teachers instead of helping improve the learning process. This shows that not all English teachers are comfortable with the existing teaching methods which are complicated. Instead of helping the students improve their Speaking skill, the teachers focus more on the every step of the methods. Therefore, there needed an alternative method to teach Speaking which benefits to the both sides, the teacher and the students. The significant thing of creating the new method is to achieve the targets of the learning process: improving students’ Speaking micro skills namely vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation.
Here the writer proposes an innovation to create a more effective and fun method to teach Speaking skill, especially for university students. The method is called movie making. Movie making is an activity of recording students’ own role playing in a video in groups and giving the subtitle of the conversations in it beyond the classroom, and presenting the movie in front of the classroom in front of the students of the other groups. As far as the writer is concerned, the students feel happy and not boring. This method also directly goes to the micro skills targeted (vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation) which can be seen from the videos’ subtitles. After all, this activity is also promoting a value of appreciating others’ works for the other groups view the video, and they sometimes give comment on the video presented.
Discussion
The steps of giving the movie making task to students are:
a. The teacher informs the students in a meeting that a week later the students are required to present a movie with a particular topic.
b. Then the teacher divides the class into some groups. One group normally consists of five students. c. The students have one week time to do the task.
d. The video should be given a subtitle of the conversations made.
e. The conversations made must be original. Any plagiarism will not be considered both students’ attendance and task record.
f. The time allotment of the movie is 10 minutes.
g. The movie is then presented in front of the class room viewed by the teacher and the other group members. h. After the presentation is done, the other students may give comments of the movie. They can comment on the
performance, and vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation used by the players.
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The 61 TEFLIN International Conference, UNS Solo 2014
i. Finally, the teacher gives corrections (if any) and suggestions to the group having finished their presentation. The next turn is given to another group with the same procedure, and so on and so forth.
Movie Making is more Effective
Movie making is a more effective method to teach Speaking for college students since the teacher can easily assess the micro skills of Speaking (vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation). Here the writer would give some examples of how to assess students’ movie based on her own experience.
Figure 1. A student is interviewing a foreigner
In one meeting, the writer asked the students to make an interview with a foreigner. The teacher gives free topic about what to ask to the foreigners except their personal things like religion, marital status, race, and salary. In figure 1, one of students seems to ask the foreigner how to go to Indonesia. The foreigner answered, in the movie, “I’m fly from Singapore”. After knowing the foreigner comes from, the teacher saw this grammar matter mistake done by the students. The students would never write this way if their grammar knowledge is adequate. They probably misheard. In this occasion, the writer takes a part to correct the mistake. It should be written “I flight fro Singapore”.
Figure 2. A student is interviewing a foreigner
Figure 2 is the same topic as that of Figure 1. In the movie, the student seems interviewing a foreigner about how long the foreigner had been in Solo at that time. Nonetheless, the diction of words is not appropriate. The question sentence should be “how long have you been here?” In this case, the students chose inappropriate vocabularies. That is why; the writer gave the correction to the group after movie presentation.
There are also cases of articulating words. Example, some students pronounce “enough” /inʡg/. The correct one is /inݞf/. Another example is word “naughty”. Some students pronounce it /nݞftI/. Based on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), “naughty” must be pronounced /nʡȣW,/DQH
Those are only two examples of conversations. With ten minute video duration, the students can produce about 250 words with diverse results. Some groups have outstanding performance with very rare mistakes in words choice, grammar, and vocabulary and the others produce more number of mistakes.
This method is even a bottom-up learning process since the teacher gives responses, corrections, and suggestions after the students have created their works. This method is not based on theory and then implemented, which stimulate less students’ creativity. Movie making teaching method gives the solutions of students’ problems at the time the students need. Therefore, the corrections and suggestions given go to the point.
Movie Making is more Fun
Playing a character is exciting, and it will be more exciting when a movie made is appreciated by others. By making a self actors movie and presenting it in from the classroom, there are two valuable lessons for both students and teacher. For the students, movie is an entertainment. Avezedo (2012) states that movies are one of the best tools to teach / practice English, because they are helpful for all learning styles including visual, auditory and even kinesthetic ones if you can add some post activities like a role play, character work and so on.
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The 61 TEFLIN International Conference, UNS Solo 2014
So the movie can entertain the students in the classroom. For example, comedy scenes always make the other students laugh, sad scenes like breaking up with a sweetheart can touch their heart to feel empathy to actor playing the scene, etc. The other lesson is the students making the movie feel being appreciated because their art work is viewed by the other students and sometimes gained responses by them. Meanwhile, it is also valuable for the teacher that technically she does not have a burden to achieve a particular teaching technique. She feels free and enjoyable in teaching Speaking as well.
Here, the writer how movie making method is a fun learning process.
Figure 3. A Group Members are Playing Their Characters in Their Movie
In Figure 3, there are four out of six members of the group playing their characters. The topic of this movie is Plastic Surgery and Fat Burning. The picture shows that a girl is warning the boy in checkered shirt to shut up because he insults the fat boy who has giant size of body. The two girls are the fat boy’s best friends.
When this movie was presented, the writer observed that the other students looked serious enjoying it. No body was busy with themselves, but every eye was concentrated on this movie.
Figure 4. A Student Playing as a Doctor Figure 5. The Doctor Gives Info about His Shows a Giant Sized-Boy Plastic Surgery and Fat Burning Clinic
A day after, the checkered boy and the fat boy fought and it led the fat boy unconscious. A doctor found him laying down, and soon after he promoted his Plastic Surgery and Fat Burning Clinic to the viewers.
In these scenes, the other students laughed at them because of the way the doctor said the two statements, and the fat boy looked funny with his laying body. The body language used also resulted in the other students’ giggles. Making a fun learning process is every single teacher’s dream. In 25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently, DuNeen (2013) suggests that successful teachers bring fun into the classroom.
This movie has very minimum mistakes on words choice, grammar, and pronunciation. However, the writer gave little correction on the grammar of Figure 4. It should be written “have you ever sad about your look and body size like this boy?”. This movie was the most excellent movie of the year.
Figure 6. The Doctor is Showing the Picture of the “New” Fat Boy’s Look
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The 61 TEFLIN International Conference, UNS Solo 2014
Finally the doctor was successful at making over the fat boy. The fat boy felt so much better, and he said thanks to the doctor although since after, the two girls did not accept his new look.
During this scene, the other students were laughing to death since the players’ way of speaking was funny. Additionally, the fat boy changed drastically. The player was changed with another person, while the other students knew that they both were their class mates.
This is a comedy-based movie. Yet, not all groups showed comedy. Some groups showed about love story, professional workers and so on but still under the main theme given by the writer. This movie was presented in meeting 11 out 13. Before, this group did more mistakes than this time. It means they performed better and better each week from the writer’s corrections and suggestions. Above all, movie making by the students should be highly appreciated because of their creativity, genuineness, and bravery to perform in not perfect English.
Conclusions and Suggestions 1. Conclusions
The writer draws the conclusions as follows:
a. Movie Making Teaching Method is an effective to assess the students’ Speaking micro skills, and fun since the process of making the movie and the movie presentation make the group and the other groups learn to produce language in an exciting way.
b. Movie Making Teaching Method is a bottom-up which stimulates students to be creative, genuine, and feeling appreciated with their own art work.
2. Suggestions
The writer gives suggestions about Movie Making Teaching Method use as the following:
a. This method is appropriate for university students since it needs several processes to do. The students must be highly literate on digital technology use, or at one of a group’s member.
b. This method is highly recommended to apply by English or especially Speaking subject for students will never feel bored, and the appreciation of students’ work will make them proud, more motivated to learn English, feel more confident.
References
Azevedo, Claudio. (2012, January 20). Using Movies in Class. BBC. Retrieved from
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/blogs/admin/using-movies-class
Baehaqi, Imam. (2009). Learning English Conversations and Voabularies.Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar.
DuNee, Julie. (2013, January 28). 25 Things Successful Teachers Do Differently. Te@chThought. Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/25-things-successful-teachers-do-differently/
Kelly, Gerald. (2005). How to Teach Pronunciation.United States of America: Longman. Lane, Linda. (2005). Focus on Pronunciation 2. United States of America: Longman.
Matreyek, Walter. (2005). Functional Conversation: Communicating in English. Surakarta: LPID. Qoryaah. (2007, March 15). Metode Pengajaran. Blogspot. Retrieved from http://qoryaah.blogspot.com/
