Movie Trailers
Trailers are powerful, well-constructed media that is very ready to use in class lessons.
I think movie trailers are an amazingly powerful media for use in the classroom. They are dramatic, motivating and short enough for intensive practice and assuring that students don’t get bored/lost.
Here’s one easy and standard way to use movie trailers in your classroom. Took me all of 10 minutes to put this lesson together – honestly!
1. Find a suitable movie trailer. A forthcoming movie or one of high interest to most of your students. Avoid those with too much violence and inappropriate content. Also check that it has strong / useful language content. For this example I’ve chosen an older classic – The Imitation Game.
2. Pull out the lines of the trailer and put into a template. See this handout below for the Imitation Game which you can use as a template. Just change the title and lines for your own trailer. Download the The Imitation Game jigsaw . Also, on Youtube you can download a transcript – click the link under the video, copy and paste the auto-transcript. You can also use an AI tool to grab a transcript - by far the best, I prefer is TurboScribe.
3. Get students to cut up the lines or if no scissors handy, use as is. Students can order by number using the left column. Cut off the title or delete.
4. Tell students they will watch a movie trailer. Ask them to try to put the lines in order before watching. Also, they have to try and guess the movie title. Prize to all teams/groups/pairs that come up with the correct title!
5. Play the trailer a few times, as many as necessary for students to successfully put the lines in order. You can make it harder by asking them to listen only and then after listening order the lines from memory.
6. Finally, play the trailer with the sound off and have students narrate the movie trailer in their own voice. Loads of fun! Run it again and experience the student narration!
It’s a very effective, motivating listening lesson plan that takes little time to prepare. Extension: Have students choose a movie trailer and pull out the lines, prepare the template for class!
Don’t forget to take a look and use our video lesson helpers and templates. Instant lesson material - use with any video! ELT Buzz Video Lessons has 1,000s of ready made “best” video lessons. Also, see our video lesson category in the Lesson Library.
