Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

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Including diversity through cinema-based affective

literacy practices: A case study with EFL/ESL pre-
service teachers

Elena Dominguez Romero & Jelena Bobkina

To cite this article: Elena Dominguez Romero & Jelena Bobkina (2023): Including diversity
through cinema-based affective literacy practices: A case study with EFL/ESL pre-service teachers,
Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/17501229.2023.2168007

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2023.2168007

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa

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Published online: 18 Jan 2023.

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INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING
https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2023.2168007

Including diversity through cinema-based affective literacy

practices: A case study with EFL/ESL pre-service teachers
a b
Elena Dominguez Romero and Jelena Bobkina
a
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, English Language and Linguistics, Facultad de Filologia A, Ciudad
Universitaria s/n, 28040, Madrid, Spain; bUniversidad Politecnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article shares an innovative pedagogical experience that approaches Received 4 October 2021
diversity through cinema-based affective literacy practices in the EFL/ESL Accepted 7 January 2023
classroom. Following a social justice approach to education, we designed
KEYWORDS
and implemented a workshop to develop affective literacy practices Diversity; inclusion; social
targeted at 49 pre-service teachers from the Master’s programme in justice; affective literacy;
EFL/ESL Teacher Training at the Complutense University of Madrid interculturality; cinema
(Spain). Then, we analysed the experience’s results through semi-
structured interviews with 20 teachers who volunteered to participate
in the study. Our ultimate intention was to raise pre-service teachers’
awareness of teachers’ important responsibility as agents of positive
social change (Katsiaficas 2020). The conclusions point to the success of
the experience and unveil implications for future lines of work.

1. Introduction
With more than 100 million people forcibly displaced worldwide due to war and disaster, the refugee
crisis remains a fundamental challenge in many parts of the world. Europe, which is nowadays domi-
nated by the securitarian logic on the global level (Zanfrini 2019)1, is not an exception and still needs
to elucidate how to tackle this challenge (UNHCR 2022). Since 2015, the EU has taken controversial
measures to counter immigration, triggering a complex mix of feelings among European citizens
that has manifested in society and extended to the educational system through intolerance,
racism, xenophobia, and violent extremism. To prevent xenophobia and rejection of immigration,
newcomers and hosts must learn how to engage in change and start construing their experiences
along common ‘cultural threads’ (Holliday 2016; Naffi and Davidson 2016, 2017). When incorporated
into critical literacy-based approaches to education, social justice and affective practices play a
crucial role in encouraging affections and constructing these common ‘cultural threads’ (Badwan
and Hall 2020) in the intercultural classroom. This improves ‘attitudes and behaviours that deal
with feelings, emotions, values and, in general, the personal concerns of students’ (Alpren 1974, 46).
Our innovative pedagogical experience, carried out in the intercultural context of Southern
Europe, specifically Madrid, in Spain, draws on social justice based on the belief that ‘education
must provide recognition, representation and respect for marginalised or subjugated cultures and
groups to create an educational environment that empowers, connects and nurtures’ (Badwan,
Popan, and Arun 2021, 704). Recognition involves affirmation strategies based on respect relocation
to the previously identified and appraised marginalised groups of students’ stigmatised identities

CONTACT Elena Dominguez elenadominguez@filol.ucm.es

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 E. D. ROMERO AND J. BOBKINA

and needs. Through these strategies, all students in the intercultural classroom learn to construct
common ‘cultural threads’ (Holliday 2016), validating different identities and ways of being in the
world (Power 2012) as co-creators of an intercultural society in the making (Weber 2020).
Specifically, the promotion of social justice and affective practices in the language teaching cur-
riculum implies teaching students to work with texts more actively and reflectively to better under-
stand power, in/equality and in/justice in human relations (Aliakbari and Faraji 2011; Benesch 2009;
Crookes 2010; Curtis and Romney 2006; Duncan-Andrade and Morrell 2008; Izadinia 2011; Nelson
2008; Norton and Toohey 2004; Riasati and Mollaei 2012). This makes underrepresented students
feel more included and empowered in the classroom (Adams, Bell, and Griffin 2007; Carlisle,
Jackson, and George 2006; Hackman 2005; Hamedani et al. 2015; Stephens, Hamedani, and Town-
send 2018). The relationship between academic and social and emotional growth is well attested
in the literature (Cho, Wang, and Christ 2019; Newcomer et al. 2021; Rodriguez and Morrison
2019; Soland and Sandilos 2021). The fact that a culturally responsive and humanising transnational
curriculum is crucial is also attested. This implies (1) using diversity as a learning opportunity; (2)
engaging in translanguaging; (3) promoting civic engagement as a curriculum; and (4) cultivating
multidirectional aspirations (Bajaj and Bartlett 2017).
Since the 1990s, researchers following Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy (1970) have increas-
ingly focused on examining relevant socio-historical and political aspects of language learning
(Bobkina and Stefanova 2016; Degener 2001; Pennycook 2001). However, there are few cinema-
based pedagogical proposals on critical literacy for the EFL/ESL classroom (Bobkina and Domínguez
Romero 2017, 2019). To bridge this gap, our pedagogical innovation is based on a self-developed
framework for implementing affective literacy practices that include diversity by constructing
common cultural threads through trailers in the EFL/ESL intercultural classroom. The framework
draws from Serafini’s (2012) expanded version of Freebody’s and Luke Four Resources Model
(2003). The proposal revolves around The Good Lie (2014) trailer, depicting the story of a group of
refugees urged to travel on foot for thousands of miles in search of safety because of the brutal
civil war in Sudan. Our ultimate intention is to raise pre-service teachers’ awareness of teachers’
important responsibility as agents of positive social change (Katsiaficas 2020).

2. Reasons for the experience

Empathy is the capacity to identify others’ feelings, understand their cause, and experience them
vicariously (Ioannidou and Konstantikaki 2008), comprising ‘the essential building block of social
life’ (Demetriou 2018, 1). It involves two primary abilities: (a) the ability to respond with an appropri-
ate emotion to another’s mental state, also known as emotional empathy and (b) the ability to ident-
ify another’s mental state or cognitive empathy (Khanjani et al., 2015). Therefore, empathic people
understand and respect the feelings of others, exhibiting more pro-social responses towards others
(Cohen and Strayer 1996) and enabling better social connections. Taking someone else’s perspective
creates a conducive environment while failing to do so leads to estrangement (Calloway-Thomas
2018). Successful social processes require empathy to understand and construe how others do
the same. The different social groups’ lack of access to each other leads to a lack of understanding
of how others construe events and, thereby, to social alienation (Naffi and Davidson 2016).
On this basis, empathy can be approached as an unquestionable foundational skill for under-
standing others’ emotions and gaining a diverse perspective of the world and, therefore, as a critical
factor to be considered within the framework of affective education. Our pedagogical innovation
draws on cinema as a potent tool to develop affects and promote social justice by enhancing
empathy in the intercultural EFL/ESL classroom. We start from the premise that films, thanks to
their ability to make viewers recognise, understand and experience the characters’ feelings as
they are drawn into the inner world of their heroes (Vendrell 2014), function as a ‘creatively inves-
tigative space which enables us to work on finding ourselves as new and even more enriched
selves across boundaries, and where all of us are hybrid’ (Holliday 2018, 3); the focus being on
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 3

‘self among others rather than the nature of the difference between national or other large cultures’
(Holliday 2018, 3). Particularly, trailers extract the most pertinent scenes from films to catch the
viewers’ attention (Sebe et al. 2006), playing with emotional impact, setting up situations, and pro-
ducing an overall feeling, both aesthetic and emotional, very quickly (Ravetto-Biagioli, as cited in
Smith et al. 2017).
Numerous investigations have been carried out to explore affect, mood and emotion within
audio-visual analysis (Domínguez Romero and Bobkina 2019; Kolakowska, Szwoch, and Szwoch
2020). The benefits of using films and trailers in the EFL/ESL classroom are well attested in the litera-
ture (Daneshfard et al. 2021; Domínguez Romero et al. 2022). Research has shown that students feel
engaged and motivated when learning English through films (Kaboha 2016; Kalra 2017), which helps
them acquire the language and the target culture (Albiladi, Abdeen, and Lincoln 2018; Bobkina and
Domínguez Romero 2018, 2019). Watching real people in authentic situations facilitates listening
and speaking acquisition and enhances students’ writing, communication and conversation skills
(Albiladi, Abdeen, and Lincoln 2018; Aliev and Albay 2016; Ismaili 2013; Kalra 2017). Through
films, new vocabulary is quickly learned (Kaboha 2016; Kalra 2017; Ismaili 2013; Liando, Sahetapy,
and Maru 2018), new grammar patterns are more easily acquired, and knowledge of stress, accent
and intonation is rapidly developed (Aliev and Albay 2016; Wahyu Nurhayati 2018). However, the
potential of trailers to promote the circulation of newcomer and host students’ emotions and
develop their levels of empathy towards constructing common cultural threads has not been prop-
erly channelled in intercultural language learning contexts to date. It is still necessary to explore
alternative pedagogical approaches and develop adequate methodological frameworks for imple-
menting such short videos in multimodal and multilingual teaching and learning processes in the
intercultural language classroom (Vandergrift 2004; 2007; Keddie 2017; Rost and Wilson 2013).

3. The teaching context

The recent emergence of anti-immigration parties, anti-immigrant stereotypes and phobias across
Europe2 makes it necessary to launch education programmes implementing affective literacy prac-
tices and promoting social justice to include diversity by constructing common cultural threads in
intercultural settings. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Spain was the most welcoming EU
country for refugees, with 86% of Spaniards supporting the idea that people fleeing violence and
war should be accepted in the country (Sanchez 2018). Spaniards have consistently maintained
open attitudes towards immigration above the European average, revealing less rejection and a
greater appreciation of its contribution to society (González Enríque and Rinken 2021; González-
Ferrer 2020). However, several authors alert that the situation is changing rapidly with the emergence
of far right-wing parties, which may lead to unprecedented growth of anti-immigration sentiments in
Spain (Torcal 2019; Peiró 2021).
On this account, our pedagogical innovation consisted of developing and implementing a work-
shop to boost affects and promote social justice by enhancing empathy through trailers in the inter-
cultural EFL/ESL classroom. Specifically, we asked 49 pre-service teachers from the Master’s
programme in EFL/ESL Teacher Training at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) to
attend a self-developed 3-hour workshop that was aimed at enhancing the development of
affective literacy among pre-service EFL/ESL teachers and comprised two 1.5-hour sessions held
over two days. All students were informed that their participation in the study was optional, and
their responses would be kept anonymous and would not affect the course’s final grades. To
ensure fidelity monitoring of the workshop programme, we opted for direct observation of our pro-
gramme implementation. Some of the parameters observed comprised, but were not limited to, the
level of activity compliance and the quality of the lesson, including facilitator’s classroom manage-
ment, ability to answer students’ questions and enthusiasm for the programme. The level of student
engagement and participation was observed, too (Keating 2020).
4 E. D. ROMERO AND J. BOBKINA

In particular, the workshop revolved around The Good Lie (2014) trailer, which depicted the story
of a group of refugees orphaned by the brutal civil war in Sudan and urged to travel on foot for thou-
sands of miles in search of safety. We were consistent with the fact that Spanish law highlights the
importance of teaching interculturality, multiculturality and equality to all students, hosts and new-
comers, noting the similarities and differences between one’s own culture and the culture
transmitted by the target language. This reinforces acceptance and respect for others as part of
the EFL/ESL content in the Spanish Baccalaureate (Order ECD/65/2015).

4. Description of the framework and the experience

Our workshop revolves around The Good Lie (2014) trailer and is based on a self-developed frame-
work for the implementation of affective literacy practices through cinema. We draw from Free-
body’s and Luke’s Four Resources Model (2003) as expanded by Serafini (2012). As shown in
Figure 1, Freebody’s and Luke Four’s Resources Model (2003) consists of four explicit reader roles
in which the social and textual domains converge to make meaning: (i) Code Breaker, (ii) Text Par-
ticipant, (iii) Text User, and (iv) Text Analyst. Serafini (2012) expanded this model into four new
social practices that characterise the reading of multimodal texts based on the recent predominance
of digitally mediated texts that is turning twenty-first-century learners into ‘viewer/thinker’ readers:
(i) Navigating, (ii) Interpreting, (iii) Designing, and (iv) Interrogating.
To implement affective literacy practices through cinema, each of the roles in the resulting model
(Figure 1) needs to be expanded by incorporating a series of affective strategies such as the
following.

. Inferring occurs when students are asked to think about and search the text making inferences
based on their prior knowledge of the world and their observations (WECB 2006-2013).
. When working with film texts, inferring involves exploring the film’s message, its plot, and its main
characters through static images or mute videos and identifying the feelings and emotions
behind them.
. Visualising is particularly important when working with video soundtracks, as students need to
use all of their other senses to supplement the lack of visual information. This means students
explore the film’s dialogues, music and soundtrack with all senses to recreate feelings and
emotions.
. Making connections is a core literacy skill required ‘to visualise, infer, synthesise and question,
especially at a deeper level’ (Chambers and Radbourne 2015). In terms of affective literacy
development, this allows students to explore their feelings and relate video texts to their own

Figure 1. Four Resources Model (Adapted from Freebody and Luke 2003 and Serafini 2012).
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 5

experiences. The development of this affective skill entails the students’ examination of their own
emotional experiences concerning the emotional experiences of the film characters.
. Questioning is an essential skill for the deep comprehension of texts that consists in catalysing
questions about the text and the author’s intentions before, during, and after reading and
looking for information to clarify and extend knowledge. This skill is crucial in video texts, as it
allows teachers to work with a wide range of film elements, such as shots, sound effects or
music, and their effect on students’ feelings and emotions.
. Synthesising takes place when students ‘create original insights, perspectives and understandings
by reflecting on text(s) and merging elements from texts and existing schema’ (WESB 2006-2013).
Synthetising inevitably involves using complex judgmental skills such as critical thinking and
problem-solving to analyse how students are moved towards emotions such as empathy.
When applied to film texts, synthesising becomes of utmost importance to allow students
to examine the role of film elements in a broader social context and increase their perception
of feelings and emotions conveyed by a film.

Figure 2 describes our framework for the implementation of affective literacy practices through
trailers. As mentioned above, affective skills have been added to complete each of the roles in
the resulting model.
The complete version of the workshop’s activities can be accessed following the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P325I0D-Btw&t=517s.

To analyse pre-service teacher participants’ opinions about the workshop, we invited 49 students to
share their perceptions. The invitation was accepted by 20 of them, who confirmed their interest in
our innovative pedagogical experience.
We opted for semi-structured interviews as the primary research tool. We followed a general
interview guide approach around flexible topics/areas enabling us to adapt the questions based
on the participants’ responses (Turner 2010). Thus, during the interview, the 20 pre-service teachers
were invited to reflect on their attitudes toward implementing trailer-based affective literacy prac-
tices in the intercultural classroom and how these practices could be used as a pedagogical tool
to help their future students build their intercultural capacities. Particular emphasis was placed on
the use of this type of activity for developing their future students’ empathy toward immigration
issues. However, to evade bias, the interviewers avoided expressing their points of view and/or pro-
viding emotional feedback. Moreover, special care was taken to word the interviewers’ parts so that
the respondents felt self-confident enough to answer as completely and honestly as possible. The
interviews were conducted conversationally, with one respondent at a time using the Zoom plat-
form. The average duration of the interviews was 15 min.
Qualitative raw data (transcribed recordings) were analysed using a content analysis approach
(Corbin and Strauss 2015). Each of the authors became familiarised with the data through repeated
reading. First, the comments were classified into positive and negative responses to structure the
initial findings (Table 1). These were further refined based on emerging content through an interac-
tive process of coding and categorising. Then, the two authors discussed the proposed final codes to
promote the interrater reliability of the data analysis. Data for which the coding differed between the
raters were subjected to a negotiated agreement process, which allowed for a meaningful reduction
of codes into five major themes (Leech and Onwuegbuzie 2007): emotional education, critical think-
ing, intercultural awareness, communication practice, and interaction.

Figure 2. Framework for the implementation of affective literacy practices through trailers.
6 E. D. ROMERO AND J. BOBKINA

Table 1. Pre-service teachers’ perceptions about the use of cinema-based affective literacy practices.
Categories, frequencies, and a selection of relevant comments
Positive comments on trailer-based activities
Categories Frequencies Relevant comments
Emotional education 30% ‘The best way to create empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, and in this sense,
cinema is perfect. It makes you feel the pain and joy of others as if it were your own’. (St 3)
‘The scenes in the video touch your heart, you cannot avoid the pain and suffering felt by
the characters, in this sense the film is an easy and direct tool to make our students reflect’.
(St 12)
‘It is important that students learn to understand the feelings of others, to empathise
with people who have a hard time, even if they are people who live in a very distant reality’.
(St 6)
Critical thinking 22% ‘Film helps students develop critical thinking, overcoming harmful aspects related to
prejudice, discrimination and racism’. (St 15)
‘Immigration is a very topical issue in modern society. Undoubtedly, it is necessary to talk
about it, especially considering the growth of racist movements in our country’. (St 18)
Intercultural 20% ‘I think the trailer-based activities may help students to understand situations they are not
awareness familiar with. They help them explore other cultures and see how people can communicate
in a non-Spanish speaking context’. (St 2)
‘These types of activities help students learn about others and understand them better.
Students sometimes do not have the opportunity to experience immigration because they
have no idea about different cultures and social contexts’. (St 5)
Communication 14% ‘I believe that these types of activities can positively affect students because they help create
practice a debate on topics that are not usually easy to discuss, such as immigration. Students
learn to communicate effectively, as they have to listen to each other and try to
understand each other’s point of view’. (St 9)
‘Films provide a great opportunity for students to debate difficult topics, being respectful and
understanding of a different point of view. This is what we are certainly lacking in modern
society’. (St 16)
Media interaction 4% ‘Visual media today has a special power, especially among young people. Movies make it
easy for students to connect with the characters on the screen. Even though we know it is
a fictional story, we feel it as if it were real. This makes film a powerful tool that teachers
should use’. (St 7)
Negative comments on trailer-based activities
Emotional education 10% ‘In my view, empathy is an innate trait. You can probably teach someone to recognise
another person’s emotions, but you can hardly teach them to perceive the emotions of
others as their own. In this sense I doubt that we can do anything in this regard’. (St 4)
‘Sometimes, it might be a challenge to change someone’s perspective on a particular
topic. I don’t think these types of activities can increase my level of empathy, especially
considering that we are working with a fictional movie’. (St 20)

5. Results and discussion

Most respondents agreed on the positive effects of the workshop activities as a pedagogical tool to
teach students to understand others’ feelings and emotions, reflect on social issues, put themselves
in other people’s shoes, and explore unfamiliar cultures and situations. Moreover, about 90% of the
pre-service teacher respondents argued in favour of incorporating these practices into their future
teaching practice. As detailed in Table 1, the most frequent benefits they mentioned include but
are not limited to developing their future students’ emotional intelligence, critical thinking skills,
intercultural awareness, and communication and interaction skills.
As presented in Table 1, emotions were the most frequent category in 30% of the participants’
responses. Pre-service teachers commented that films could be an excellent tool to create emotional
bonds, making one feel physically along with others as if their emotions were contagious. Films were
also reported to help observe problems from different perspectives, putting viewers in other
people’s shoes.
Critical thinking skills were the second most frequent category, with 22% of the responses. Pre-
service teachers’ observations focused mainly on cognitive aspects, pointing out that films foster
intellectual growth and maturity.
They also commented on the advantages of films for facilitating students’ intercultural encoun-
ters in the language classroom. Intercultural awareness was the third most frequent category,
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 7

accounting for about 20% of the total responses. Pre-service teachers’ comments dealt mainly with
the opportunities that films give us to get acquainted with new cultural realities, learn to identify
differences, and compare practices, traditions and habits.
Communication skills were mentioned in about 14% of the responses. Pre-service teachers men-
tioned trailers as a helpful tool to learn to communicate effectively when dealing with challenging
topics, as students need to understand others’ points of view. They also agreed that trailer-based
activities foster students’ participation and interaction and promote active listening.
Finally, media interaction was mentioned in about 4% of the responses collected. This implies that
some participants experienced an interaction with the persons on the screen or even identified
themselves with them, making films a powerful tool not to be dismissed. Media interaction refers
to ‘person-to-person’ involvement in mass content between an audience member and a ‘media per-
sonality’ (Nordlund 1978).
Some concerns they shared involve difficulties in teachers’ need to prioritise emotional content
(Cole 2007) and develop an affective connection with the text they wish to teach (Misson and
Morgan 2005). Negative comments were present in about 10% of the responses collected. Most
pre-service teachers expressed their doubts regarding affective involvement and the possibility of
changing people’s feelings toward a particular topic, especially when such a transformation needs
to be achieved through activities based on films.

6. Future pedagogical directions and limitations of the study

The study commenced with the fundamental premise that the integration of affective literacy prac-
tices into critical literacy-based language teaching is highly beneficial in intercultural EFL/ESL class-
rooms. In articulating this view, we explored various perspectives supporting the advantages of
teaching critical literacy based on affective literacy skills. On this basis, we developed a framework
for implementing affective literacy practices through cinema in the context of critical pedagogy in
the EFL/ESL classroom. Particular emphasis was placed on working with trailers because they
have been shown to be a compelling resource to highlight our feelings and emotions, thus increas-
ing our levels of empathy. Specifically, we created a series of activities based on The Good Lie (2014)
trailer. We applied our model and implemented these activities with 49 EFL/ESL pre-service teachers
whose perceptions of the workshop were analysed thanks to the semi-interviews that we conducted
at the end of the implementation period.
The encouraging results obtained in the interviews open up the possibility that this experience
can significantly help those researchers and future language teachers willing to incorporate
affective literacy practices into their classrooms. It was not for nothing that our ultimate goal was
to raise future teachers’ awareness of language, gender and race discrimination in the light of the
latest efforts of the 2030 Agenda to promote peaceful and inclusive societies (United Nations
2015), as well as the UNESCO directives to introduce alternative pedagogical practices in support
of a Global Citizenship Education aimed at building fair and inclusive societies (Global citizenship
education: preparing learners for the challenges of the twenty-first century, 2014).
However, this study has limitations. Generalisability is the main one, with pre-service teacher par-
ticipants restricted to 49. Consequently, positive outcomes must be considered in light of the nature
of this small study sample. It is also worth noting that anti-immigration issues cannot be eradicated
by using cinema in the language classroom. However, this practice-based study implies that cinema
can be used as a point of departure to tackle inclusion issues.
Furthermore, it is not plausible to expect all teachers to successfully use trailers, incorporating
cinema as a pedagogical tool in the language classroom. However, a good start would be to
guide them throughout the process. Continuous formation workshops where teachers who feel
comfortable with film resources share their knowledge with teachers who feel less confident
using multimodal tools are good examples. At a deeper level, further research in the field is required;
the potential of cinema as a tool to promote social justice needs to be explored in different
8 E. D. ROMERO AND J. BOBKINA

educational contexts. There is also work to be done to incorporate social justice debates on the poli-
tics of recognition and representation in education. In addition, diverse video-based materials, such
as documentaries or series, need to be the object of further research.

Notes
1. Figures published by Frontex, the EU border agency, show that “irregular entries” rose to 114,720 in the first half
of 2022, 84% up on last year. The number attempting entry via the western Balkans rose by nearly 200%. About
60,000 people are expected to cross the Channel in boats this year, double the 2021 total. These figures do not
include millions of Ukrainians who have sought EU asylum since February. (Tisdall, The Guardian, 24/07/2022)
2. One recent example is the victory of the post-fascist party Fratelli d’Italia whose leader, Georgia Meloni, became
Italy’s prime minister in October 2022.

Notes on contributors
Elena Domínguez Romero is associate professor of English language and linguistics at the Complutense University of
Madrid (Spain). Her recent research interests include evidentiality and positioning in media discourse as well as applied
linguistics and innovation for research on teaching. Her publications comprise over 70 papers in international refereed
journals (Journal of Pragmatics 2022, 2021; Thinking Skills and Creativity 2021; Computer Assisted Language Learning
2020; Teaching English with Technology 2020; Education and Information Technologies 2021; Intercultural Pragmatics
2019), book chapters and co-edited volumes in Peter Lang, DeGruyter, IGI Global, Multilingual Matters, Routledge,
McGraw Hill, or Bloomsbury.
Jelena Bobkina lectures in the Department of Linguistics Applied to Science and Technology at the Technical University
of Madrid (UPM) where she teaches English for Specific Purposes. Her main publication and research interests are in
computer-assisted language learning, discourse analysis in digital media environments, and EFL/ESL teaching method-
ology. She belongs to the ENTELEARN (ENglish, Technologies, & LEARNing) Research Group and is an active member of
numerous research projects on innovative teaching. She has published extensively in a large number of internationally
refereed journals (Computer Assisted Language Learning 2020, Education and Information Technologies 2021, Teaching
English with Technology 2020, Thinking Skills and Creativity 2021).

Disclosure
No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of the research.

Declaration of competing interest

There is no conflict of interest.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) / European Regional Development Fund:
[Grant Number PID2021-125327NB-I00; Project Number 4030263] and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de
España (MCIN) / Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation: [Grant Number PID2021-125327NB-I00; Project Number
4030263].

ORCID
Elena Dominguez Romero http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8128-2131
Jelena Bobkina http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0432-9957
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 9

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12 E. D. ROMERO AND J. BOBKINA

Appendix

INFERRING
Look at some pictures of the main characters of the film and discuss them: Who are they? Where are they from? What do
they look like? What kind of people do you think they are? What are their feelings right now? What is their story?
VISUALISING
Watch this mute version of the trailer of the film: What are the most striking elements of the trailer? What is the genre of the
film? What kind of elements do you expect to find in the film? What kind of music/sound effect do you expect to hear in the
trailer? Make a list of words that you might hear in this extract. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2X1zZIGtmE&t=3s
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Watch the full version of trailer again, with sound. Check your predictions regarding the genre, music, and sound effects used
in the video of the trailer. Based on the trailer, guess where the plot is going to be set. Trace the plot of the film based on the
trailer. Is this story feasible? Justify your answer using your own experience.

Read the summaries of the film provided by two internet users and compare them with yours,
o ‘A group of Sudanese refugees given the chance to resettle in America arrive in Kansas City, Missouri, where their encounter with
an employment agency counsellor forever changes all of their lives’. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2652092/
o ‘The Good Lie is a film about a group of Sudanese refugees given the chance to resettle in America who arrive in Kansas City,
Missouri, where their encounter with an employment agency counsellor forever changes all of their lives. Nearly 70,000 refugees
were resettled across the United States in 2014, many arriving with little more than they could carry. Often, America is thought of
solely as a land of opportunity. We overlook hardships that new arrivals to the U.S. may have experienced, focusing instead on the
assumed potential before them. America is and has been a safe haven for many people, but in arriving on these shores, they leave
behind a life and a home’. https://annmichaelsen.com/2016/11/08/the-good-lie/

Discuss some recent events that caused massive migration in the world/your country. Are you familiar with the situation
of migrants and refugees in your country?
QUESTIONING
Reflect on the film creators’ point of view towards refugees. Justify your answer.
What do you think is their point of view towards refugees? What is the message conveyed in this film? How do you know? Why?

Read an extract from the poem written by Warsan Shire, a 24-year-old Kenyan-born Somali poet. Do you think this poem
reflect the film creator’s point of view towards refugees? And yours? Justify your point of view.

SYNTHESISING
How does the film director create empathy towards the characters? Consider the use of camera shots, sound, music,
dialogue, narrator’s voice, costume, lightening.

Consider the combination of different shots (close-up, medium and long) used throughout the trailer.
How does the film operator use them to express ideas and emotions? What kind of shots prevail in the video? Are there any cut
shots or dissolve shots? What are they used for?
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 13

Listen to the sound track of the trailer. In which way does it contribute to create the empathy towards the film characters?

Find a Way by Nico & Vinz (2014)

What does clothing tell us about the characters? In which way do you think clothes reflect their personality?