I know that is very difficult to bring new things into the classroom. I am talking about new material, technology or games. So, through this essay I’m going to motivate you to use new things in your everyday classes, but not any material, I’m talking about movies. And the special movie that I’m referring to is called “Elizabeth the golden age” Firstly, I’m going to explain why I think it would be good to use this kind of material in the classroom. Then I’m going to refer about negative aspects and finally a conclusion which will define if we should use films in the classroom.
From my point of view, it is very important that we as teachers use different material in the classroom. We can not be monotonous. Now, I think that a good thing to use is a film. But I’m not talking about any movie; I’m talking about Elizabeth the golden age. Here you have a little summary about it: Two empires and two faiths during the golden age find Queen Elizabeth facing bloodlust for her throne and familial betrayal. Papist Spain wants to bring down the heretic Elizabeth. They want to restore the Catholicism in England. So, Philip build and armada to attack Queen Elizabeth I. But the virgin queen fights with all her heart and sticks to her beliefs to save her people. She tries to show that she was not just a Queen, she was a heroine too.
The movie Elizabeth the golden age has a lot of positive things such as: spectacular visual effects, the quality of the film, the unexpected plot twists and the music, of course. It really calls the attention of the watcher because it has a very interesting story, and for me that is very important. From my point of view, a movie needs more than good actors. It is a group of things which are going to make people watch a film. And in this case Elizabeth has much more than just good actors. I strongly believe that here we can find a spectacular movie with all those things that make a film great. So, I firmly recommend people see it.
Elizabeth is a great movie with a lot of historical content, but we can use it to teach our English lessons. Thus we can have a nice class using something fun. We can use this movie to talk about tenses, to do some listening, sketches or even for describing people. So, movies are not just for watching them. We can use them as a tool in the classroom.
On the other hand, we have to take into consideration that the movie has negative things too. One of those is the excessive violence that we can find there. So, the movie is not appropriate for children and sensitive people, they can feel very bad watching it. Another thing that I didn’t like too much is that it is a little bit complicate to understand the film at once. Therefore if you don’t pay attention to it you are going to get lost easily. I’m telling this because I got a little bit lost at the beginning, but then the plot captivated me.Also we are talking about a classic and most of the people are not accustomed to appreciate classic because they find them unoriginal. But you can find exceptions as Elizabeth.
Anyway, we can choose just some scenes, the best ones and show them to our students. Then we can explain a little activity and in that simple way we are going to be using something different. We can avoid that boring classes with worksheets and choose something simple as a movie and have a really nice class. I’m sure that everyone is going to enjoy it.
To sum up, I strongly believe that we can make a difference choosing simple things as movies to teach in classes. Nowadays teachers are doing the same thing as many years ago. We have different material that we can use almost everywhere. And everybody knows movies. Elizabeth is a great one, and I think that it would be good to use it to teach English or even History. So, try. I know that you will get good results. You just have to take Elizabeth into your classroom and see the difference.
