Welcome to Taipei Movie Club. This is a place you can come and discuss English movies and television programs. What I hope to do is create a place where people can practice their English and learn about movies at the same time.
Television and DVD provide an excellent opportunity to make English a part of your everyday life. All you need is a television and a DVD player. Of course things “can” sometimes become difficult very quickly after you turn them on. Movies and television programs were not produced to cater to the needs of EFL students.
That is both the problem and the beauty of them.
To enjoy and benefit from the authenticity and entertainment value of films you will need to find effective ways to understand them. If you succeed in this you will have become a very good language student.
You will need to learn how to identify worthwhile vocabulary, how to ignore rare words and expressions, how to interpret figurative speech, and how to “hear” language that is pronounced normally (with a lot of reduced syllables and sentences that are pronounced almost exactly like one word). You will need to learn about the television listings in your local newspaper, and how to make best use of the functions on your DVD player.
We will maintain constantly expanding vocabulary lists of words commonly used in movies and television programs, and we will write synopses. Each synopsis will be another student’s preview so we will try to include discussion and vocabulary that will be useful in understanding the film.
The following is the suggested format:
1) Movie Title.
2) List of main characters. You can also give the actor's name.
3) Plot summary. It is best to focus on the most important aspects of the story so that you do not become overwhelmed in detail. Try to use words from the vocabulary list in the plot summary so that these words can be re-cycled and really learned.
4) Statement of theme. Most goods movies try to tell you something important about life. Usually by placing the main character into some sort of conflict with himself and/or other characters. The way that the conflict is resolved (or not) is often the theme of a story.
5) Key Lines. There will often be one or two key lines in a film that reveal its theme. For example, in the movie "Across the Universe," one of the key lines comes in the song "Hey Jude." "Well, don't you know, that it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder". Fortunately Jude is no fool and decides to choose love and togetherness with his girlfriend rather than loneliness and isolation. If he had made the other choice the film would have been a tragedy.
6) Personal Reaction. This is where you have an opportunity to say whether or not you liked the movie, and why.
Keep in mind that disliking a movie does not make it bad movie. People will often dislike a movie that has an excellent script, convincing acting, great camera work etc, if the movie deals with themes that make them uncomfortable, or presents characters that they don't like.
Learning to distinguish between your subjective reaction to a film and its actual quality will teach you a lot about both art and your own psychology.
7) Favorite scenes. This will usually include a quote or two.
Quotes are good.
8) Vocabulary list. Try to focus on the words that you feel you have seen before. MOVIES CONTAIN TOO MUCH VOCABULARY. It is essential that you focus on the most common words. The vocabulary list should contain no more than thirty or forty words, and most of those words should be vaguely familiar to you already.
9) Questions. Yes, it is a good idea to write them down.
If you are asking a question about the meaning of a word or expression try to give as much context as possible.
At very least the sentence where you found the word. It
Will be helpful too if you can give a brief description of the scene where you found the expression.
Note: You do not need to follow this format with every movie. Sometimes all that you will get from a movie will be a short vocabulary list and maybe a couple of questions. Other times you will decide that you have found a really worthwhile film and decide to study it seriously, in which case you will probably want to do all or
