Visibility of eTwinning Projects Group July 2012 Newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It was interesting to see how they discussed in
order to make their story not just a series of
sentences or utterances. They actually tried to
create a context, a kind of ‘situation in the
situation’ where the actors would play and perform.
For example, it was not only a matter of asking for
directions on the street, but also to explain why the
people needed such information, then they had to
think about who the people were, where they were,
what they were doing there and so on. Their
creativity was under pressure!
It was nice to see them so engaged in this
productive phase!
After this first experience I've been using
filmmaking also in an eTwinning project where
students are writing news to be published in an
online newspaper. We thought of creating a News
TV programme where they read their articles just
like speakers.
Once the scripts were ready, they had to think
about the location, and here too they wanted to do
some experiments: they suggested a couple of real
locations but also they asked for the possibility to
try to create the location just like in a studio.
Later, a couple of students from higher levels
showed interest too and asked to join us. We
thought about having the same situations but on a
B1/B2 level of English. The process was the same:
planning of the story, creation of the script and so
on.
There is still so much to be done – pronunciation
and intonation are not perfect at all! But is it easy
to act in a foreign language? Acting is quite poor,
I'm afraid, but our focus this time was not on that
aspect.
After watching the videos, the students themselves
suggested changes in the process: for example,
they said that next time they'd better not write a
full story but leave more room to improvisation in
order to be more natural in their performance.
I think this example shows how useful it is to
integrate filmmaking in the classroom, and when,
some time after the videos were ready, I read
Matthew Needleman's post here:
http://creatinglifelonglearners.com/?p=220, I could
only agree.
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