When teachers talk about films : an investigation into some aspects of English teachers' discursive practices

Abstract

When teachers say: “you can learn a lot from films”, what does this imply? This article explores interviews with eighteen Norwegian English teachers about the learning value of films in the lower secondary classroom. The films that these teachers talk about are mostly fiction films about conditions in the English-speaking world or film adaptations of literary texts. This article focuses on the teachers’ reasoning about fiction films. I use perspectives from critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore how the teachers justify their choices and what notions of films they can be seen to rely on. There appears to be some sort of general agreement in the field of English teaching that films deserve a place in the classroom. Still, notions about the value of classroom film use might represent a blind spot that has escaped scrutiny.