Video Experiment
As I have an assignment due next week for which I need to prepare a class activity using a video, I decided today my students would be my guinea pigs. Little do they know about my experimentation. Because of our health unit right now, I chose the film Juno. Their pre-viewing activity was a reading scan of a movie review printed from a website. Then they had eight listening comprehension questions for a five minute clip at the beginning of the film (around the twenty minute mark). For the post-viewing activity I asked them to write three discussion questions on the topics from the film: teen pregnancy, adoption, or abortion. When we started they did not know the word pregnant, and I wondered how much they would get out of the film clip. Overall they got most of the listening questions, but for me the interesting part of the activity was the discussions. One group started with the question: 'What would you do if your girlfriend was pregnant?' Culturally the film was probably a little shocking. From what I understood the treatment for pregnancy before mariage in China would likely be an abortion, and in Saudi Arabia the girl would probably be killed, but no one gets pregnant before mariage. If nothing else one small group was highly entertained by learning the word 'condom' in English. I liked the richness of the video for dialogue and cultural content, so I think the experiment was a success.