Abstract:

English has emerged and continues to grow as an important langauge of communication in India. It is, however, taught in majority of the classrooms with emphasis on its linguistic properties, i.e., phonological, lexical and grammatical. What needs to be emphasised is the communicative approach so that the focus is on the meaning rather than on the form of the language. For this, negotiated interaction between learners in the classroom needs to be facilitated. This paper highlights the use of movies as texts to enhance communicative activities for language learning. It brings out the effects of using movie in an experimental study with a group of high school students showing a high degree of motivation for the film. This interest was sustained subsequently by the class by involving the students in activities related to the development of writing skills. Given the results of using this technique, it is recommended that an experimental study be conducted to see the effect of using a film for development of speaking, listening and writing skills. This can be tried with pre-primary and primary groups as well. We present this study here for two reasons. Though the study is based on classroom situation, the medium used is the movie which lends itself freely for distance teaching and learning. The other reason is that, given proper thought and the necessary instructional design, writing skills in English can be taught through distance mode, and in this effort, the movie/film could be an effective tool.