I recently commissioned one of the Co-Editors of the Australian web site Senses of Cinema to write a piece based on her experience and ideas about web film writing. Something she said has made me ponder a tangential issue, that of using movies as aids in language learning. I have copied a recent email here:

 

Looking at your piece again, I was struck by your comment that films (and film writing) assist individuals to learn foreign languages. I've always been interested in how people get to love movies, and your comment makes me recall language students I have known who came to like movies because they had to watch Truffauts, Fassbinders, Morettis as part of their course. Very many of these people were not what I would describe as traditional cinephiles coming to the film for specifically the cinematography, mise-en-scene etc. To them, the film was purely a pedagogical resource and watching it a utilitarian gesture intended to help them with their pronunciation etc. I wonder how many of them incidentally came to a love of movies that way!

 

I took the liberty of putting Rosenbaum and Martin's Movie Mutations at the bottom of your piece as a bibliographical concession to Intellect. (There is actually a discussion of the role of DVD which is cogent to your remarks). But the chain letter writers of Movie Mutations came to movies via postwar art cinema; not unlike the traditional university language student. But a very different trajectory. And a very different sensibility.

 

Presumably language students warm to the movie the more of the language they understand and appreciate. They must thereby warm to the other modes of expression in the movie. I am warming to this topic and I may think about tracking down some people who came to cinema via linguistics. I see you studied French, although I suspect you've loved movies for a lot longer. I wonder how many confirmed Business Studies types got an infatuation for Bunuel and jacked it in in favour of arts admin! Or film criticism! Anyway, your notion that films and film writing assist people to learn foreign languages comes full circle, and foreign languages also assist people to learn about movies!

 

Perhaps these musings go over fairly obvious ground, but I'd be interested in what people have to say about what seems a fairly underwritten aspect of reception.

Best,

Richard