Using Movies in TESOL Classrooms: Why the Students Should Never Pick the Movie

(TESOL ideas--showing movies in the classroom)

This post has two purposes--one is a follow up to the previous post on my experience using The Fast and the Furious 7, and to describe why this movie has convinced me that it's a terrible idea to let the students pick the movie.

But I also want to talk in general about the popular TESOL idea that the students, rather than the teacher, should pick the movie.  (Something I've often heard people say.)

I used to be sympathetic to this idea.  However, my experience with The Fast and the Furious 7 has convinced me that the students should never again be allowed to pick the movie.  The teacher should pick the movie.  Or possibly the teacher should allow students to vote on a movie from a limited selection of choices that the teacher has pre-approved.

But never again will I ever say to my classes: "Guys, we can do whatever movie you want.  Just tell me what you're interested in."

My reasons are as follows:

1). Students pick stupid movies
It's tempting to just write off my experience with The Fast and the Furious 7 as just a one time fluke, but honestly, now that I think back over all the movies that my students have pleaded with me to do over the years, the vast majority of them have been inappropriate or stupid--cheesy romance movies, dumb action movies, or horror movies always seem to top the list of requests.

2). Students pick movies which are inappropriate for their level
So, students have no idea what movies are good for their level or not.  They're attracted to the show and spectacle of big budget Hollywood action movies, but have not really thought about how all the military language and vocabulary that is usually emphasized in these movies is totally useless for their daily English conversation.

3). Students always pick movies they've already seen
So, the teacher asks the class what movie they want to see.  What are the students going to pick?  Obviously not some movie they've never heard of.  How could they?  So they'll just resort to whatever movie is most recent in their memory, and pick whatever dumb blockbuster Hollywood came out with that year.
And what's the fun in that?  Of course they're going to be immediately bored with the movie, because they've already seen it.
Also, the memories of young people are very short.  Working with teenagers in Cambodia and Vietnam, I've discovered that they're more or less oblivious to any movie that is more than 3 years old.  So if you let them choose the movie just from their limited memory selection, you're going to be limited to just the movies that came out in the past couple years.
The teacher has a much better knowledge of the available selection of English movies.

4). The students can't all agree on the same movie
So, TESOL teachers often will say things like, "Make sure the movie is something the students are interested in, and not just something the teacher is interested in."  Or, "the students should always have control over the movie."  (Both phrases I've heard around the staffroom.)
But this is ridiculous.  It's as if the students were one big monolithic entity that all had the same taste in movies.
If you get 20 different students in the room, they're all going to have 20 different opinions on movies.  Do you think you're going to get a movie that will keep all 20 of them happy?
And this leads to the next problem.

5). The Tyranny of the Majority
So, since it's impossible to let the students pick the movie as if "the students" were just one monolithic entity, you end up just having to have a vote and going with the majority view.  (Actually I say "majority", but really you never get a clear majority.  You have to go with a plurality.  It's a tyranny of the plurality.)
So then you have one movie that some of the students like, but many of them don't.  Which leads to the next problem...

6). Students are willing to put up with a movie they dislike if they view it as coming from the teacher, but they are unwilling to put up with a movie they dislike if it is selected by their classmates.
If the teacher chooses the movie, the students will view it as coming from an authority source.  And they'll usually accept it.  They usually trust and respect the teacher.  But they don't trust their classmates to choose a movie.  If their classmates have chosen a movie they dislike, then they'll complain about it and agitate for a different movie.  Which is what happened to me with The Fast and the Furious 7.  We only got 20 minutes into the movie, and then half the class started to become vocal about their desire to change the movie.

7). The teacher needs to understand the movie in order to create materials for it.
I discovered this when I was working on The Fast and the Furious 7.  It's one of those movies where the soundtrack dominates the opening scenes, and I was trying to transcribe the words for my students, but I couldn't because I was completely unfamiliar with these songs, and had no idea what they were saying.
It was also difficult for me to keep track of these characters.  I used Wikipedia and IMDB to try to keep track of these characters, but I still had to resort to occasionally just labeling some characters "girl in pink" or "race girl".

8). The teacher needs to be engaged with the movie for the teacher's own sanity
So, putting together movie worksheets is like anything in life--it's easy to throw something together slapdash, but to do it well takes time.  And if the teacher completely hates the movie they're working on, they're not going to put a lot of time into trying to get the movie script exactly right.  If the teacher is creating materials for the movie, it's important that it's a movie the teacher won't mind spending a lot of time with.