Innovation in Language Learning

This contribution aims at focusing on the perspectives offered by the use of cinema in foreign language learning – particularly in its grammar and morphosyntactic structures.

I have always used films in my lessons at school and university, in order to better convey to pupils and students the contents of a particular aspect of the foreign - more specifically German - literature or culture occurred in the course.

Celluloid material is well-known all over the world as an efficient didactic possibility in order to implement students’ motivation and curiosity about a specific topic of a whatever subject, not necessarily involving a foreign language. Moreover it is an efficient teaching method when applied to foreign language learning: films in their original versions are often included in didactics to let students and pupils hear the correct pronunciation of the target language, get them used to its sound and see how it is actually employed in everyday life. But cinema can especially be considered to be a powerful tool for developing social consciousness and historical approaches.

Personally I have always used films to make the class aware of the real context of use of German in specific periods in the history of the country (e.g. Berlin Wall history). Nevertheless, during the viewing of such material, I also realized how interesting it could turn out to be, if used as a resource for grammar and morphosyntactic purposes as well. This can be made in different ways and from different points of view. In the present paper I will try to suggest some possible ways of analyzing film in order to find out important grammatical contents in it and conversely, but more difficult, of dealing with specific linguistic structures, tracing them out in different movie segments.