The seventh art forms an essential part of the students’ daily lives; additionally, it has been asserted that it is a highly advantageous didactic tool for high school foreign language learners. Thus, the purpose of this empirical study is twofold: to explore high school learners’ perception on the didactic exploitation of films in the French classroom, and to determine whether or not the cinema-based approach is as beneficial for high school French students as it seems. Accordingly, a cinema-based teaching unit was put into practice in two high school French classrooms and, afterwards, the thirty-five participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire in order to examine their views on this methodology and analyse its effects on their language learning process. The results obtained have revealed that high school French students have a very positive opinion on the cinema-based approach and that this method is motivating and helps learners to enhance their linguistic and sociocultural competences.

Introduction: Research on teacher perceptions on the use of films in the secondary school English classroom is scarce since most studies have focused on other educational levels and on the opinions of students. Besides, most of these studies are merely of a theoretical nature. Consequently, there is a need for empirical research which sheds further light on both Compulsory Secondary Education and teacher perceptions on this matter. Objective of the paper: this study explores the perception of a secondary school teacher on the use of a film as a tool for conducting EFL classes. Method: data were obtained according to the following steps. Firstly, the English instructor was interviewed regarding her views on the use of authentic audio-visual materials in the English classroom. Then, the teacher examined a film-based lesson plan which included the advantages of authentic audio-visual resources for EFL as defined by scholars in the field. Finally, the teacher was interviewed again to trace changes in her perception. Findings: the results of the study show that, in the initial interview, the participant’s opinion was positive although her use of movies as a didactic aid was vague and minimal. However, in the final interview, she reflected a more positive view and she was willing to include films and their multiple educational benefits into her lessons, advocating, therefore, a more holistic understanding of EFL. Conclusion: the contextually situated awareness elicited through the teacher’s own experience of the lesson plan made her question her own classroom practice. This led to the amplification of the teacher’s understanding of EFL, which, at the post-intervention stage, emerged not only as a linguistic endeavour but also as a platform from where to promote critical thinking, aesthetic sensitivity or awareness towards issues of social justice.

El Romanticismo fue un movimiento extremadamente influyente que surgió a finales del siglo 18 y que tuvo un gran impacto en varias áreas, incluida la literatura. Innumerables escritores han representado en sus obras características esenciales del Romanticismo como la representación de horror y emociones intensas, el uso de entornos naturales exóticos y salvajes, el nacionalismo, el individualismo, la mente humana, y el simbolismo, entre muchas otras. En este artículo, se muestra cómo el Romanticismo influyó, en concreto, la narrativa breve norteamericana analizando cinco obras: “Rip Van Winkle,” de Washington Irving; “The Minister’s Black Veil,” de Nathaniel Hawthorne; “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” de Herman Melville; y “The Minister’s Black Veil” y “The Tell-Tale Heart,” de Edgar Allan Poe. Los resultados que se han obtenido de este análisis han demostrado que estas cinco historias breves se pueden considerar trabajos románticos porque reflejan múltiples características del Romanticismo. De hecho, estos autores retratan las peculiaridades de los dos sub-campos más importantes del Romanticismo Americano conocidos como “Romanticismo Claro” y “Romanticismo Oscuro.” Romanticism was an extremely influential movement which flourished at the end of the 18th century and which had a huge impact on various areas, including literature. Countless writers have represented in their works key Romantic features such as the depiction of horror and intense emotions, the use of exotic and wild natural settings, nationalism, individualism, the reproduction of the human psyche, and symbolism, among many others. In this paper, it is shown how the Romantic Movement influenced, more specifically, the North American short story by analysing five works: Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle,” Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil,” Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The results which have been obtained from this analysis have demonstrated that these five short stories can be considered as Romantic works because they reflect multiple characteristics of the Romantic Movement. In fact, these writers portray the peculiarities of the most important subfields of American Romanticism, which are known as “Light Romanticism” and “Dark Romanticism.”

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