Learning English through Role-play with movie scripts

Abstract

Most English learning materials for high school students in Korea are aimed at students who attend regular public high schools: they focus on preparing for the National College Entrance Examination (KSAT). Materials in the textbooks provided by the Korean Education Ministry generally give students few opportunities to be exposed to authentic English. As a result, some students tend to lose motivation and interest in learning English. In order to increase motivation, textbooks and teaching approaches should consider the learners’ interests, their linguistic and cultural schema, as well as their learning styles; these are the aims of this Portfolio. This Textbook is designed to teach students in their first year of a Private Korean high school for Arts majors. The students’ English proficiency level of speaking and writing are assumed to be intermediate-low and their reading and listening proficiency level is assumed to be intermediate-high according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines. The target learners are unique from public school students who generally study the national curriculum, which focuses only on preparing for college entrance exams; whereas, the target students chose to focus on arts-related studies including instrumental and fine arts. Most students, therefore, already have some background knowledge of famous artists and history of music and film. Furthermore, since the learners are familiar with stage performances (such as, singing, performing, and acting), they have positive attitudes with regards to learning English and they are enthusiastic about communicating actively with others in English. This is because many of them have international ambitions, whether it is, to travel abroad for further study or leisure, or potentially work in international art fields. Most of the textbooks in use, at this high school, however, have neither the needed activities related to the arts, nor the tasks these students need to explore their speaking and performance skills. For these reasons, this Textbook will include many different activities for process and genre based writing, and there will be many different themes of performance as their final presentation will be based on what they wrote in Process-Genre based mini activities.