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Movie Trailer Listening Lessons

Movie-Trailer-Credits-Intro1I think movie trailers are an amazingly powerful media for use in the classroom. They are dramatic, motivating and short enough for intensive practice and assuring that students don’t get bored/lost.

Here’s one really easy and standard way to use movie trailers in your classroom.  Took me all of 10 minutes to put this lesson together – honestly!

1.  Find a suitable movie trailer.  A forthcoming movie and one of high interest to most of your students.  Avoid those with too much violence and inappropriate content. Also check that it has strong / useful language content. For this example I’ve chosen – The Imitation Game. 

2.   Pull out the lines of the trailer and put into a template.  See this handout for the Imitation Game which you can use as a template. Just change the title and lines for your own trailer.   Download the The Imitation Game jigsaw .   Also, on Youtube you can download a transcript – click the three dots under the video, copy and paste the auto-transcript.

3.    Get students to cut up the lines or if no scissors handy, use as is. Students can order by number using the left column. Cut off the title or delete.

4.    Tell students they will watch a movie trailer.  Ask them to try to put the lines in order before watching. Also, they have to try and guess the movie title. Prize to all teams/groups/pairs that come up with the correct title!

5.   Play the trailer a few times, as many as necessary for students to successfully put the lines in order. You can make it harder by asking them to listen only and then after listening order the lines from memory.

6. Finally, play the trailer with the sound off and have students narrate the movie trailer in their own voice. Loads of fun!

It’s a very effective, motivating listening lesson plan that takes little time to prepare.

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ddeubel

Teacher trainer, technology specialist, educational thinker...creator of EFL Classroom 2.0, a social networking site for thousands of EFL / ESL teachers and students around the world.

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2 Responses

  1. Joan Gill says:

    Excellent lesson! Can’t wait to try this!

  2. David D says:

    Thanks, glad you liked it. It’s simple but works ….

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