Standard 7: Planning for Instruction:

The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting

rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas,
curriculum, cross discipline skills and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of
learners and the community content.
Artifact 1 article review
Class: FRE 641: Teaching French through Film
National Standards for Foreign Language Learning: 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1
The students that come into our classrooms today are very computer
literate and technology driven. It is important that the L2 instructor
understand how to reach her students and to plan instruction that will
maximize comprehensible input and SLA in her classroom. For this reason, I
have chosen an article review that I wrote for my French 641 class, Teaching
French through Film as my artifact for Standard 7. I believe this artifact
demonstrates my understanding of this standard because due to reading and
critiquing this article, I learned several ways that I can incorporate films into
my classroom to improve my students comprehension of French or any
language I may teach.
Everyone likes to watch films. I do not know anyone that does not like
to go to the movies or get immersed in a good movie. Watching movies is
exciting for students even if it is in a foreign language. The films are
attractive to the students because students today thrive in a multimedia
environment. Anytime that I have used a movie in class as part of my lesson
plan, my students response has always been positive. Many times,
especially in my more advanced classes, I will put the subtitles on in the TL.
This helps increase my students comprehension. According to this article,
when we teach a L2, showing films to the students in the TL links the
students to the target culture in a very efficient way. It is very visual and it is
authentic because the film is made for spectators from the target culture
(Sturm, 2012).
I like the idea of using French movies in the classes that I teach. Not
only does it link the students to the French culture but they are also exposed
to authentic speech. It is not necessary for students to understand every
word that is spoken but the goal is for them to understand the meaning that
is being conveyed. We can even use authentic films in beginning French
classes. The article suggests showing the trailer of the film a few times
before actually watching it (Sturm, 2012). After watching the trailer, as a
class we can talk about what we think the film is about and as the instructor I
would go over some vocabulary that I think they would need to understand
to be able to get the gist of the trailer and later the film. By adjusting the

lesson plan to fit the needs of my students based on their level in French, I
can use this lesson plan to maximize SLA.
Sturm, J. (2012). Using Film in the L2 Classroom: A Graduate Course in Film
Pedagogy. Foreign Language Annals, 45, 246-257.