Listening to English movies: Effects on junior high school students' intrinsic interest in learning English

Many junior high school students in Japan give a wide berth to learning English, most especially to listening activities. In the present study, foreign movies with lines spoken in English were used as course material, in order to expose students to authentic spoken English. It was expected that the English movies would stimulate students' intrinsic interest and motivate them to try to improve their listening comprehension, because English movies not only give an authentic and attractive context to the use of English, but also contain unique English expressions. Ninth graders (N=200) were assigned to I of 3 curricula : (1) dialogues from actual movie scenes, (2) the same dialogues replaced by frozen frames, with dubbing done by Assistant Language Teachers (ALT; native speakers of English working as part-time assistants in English classes), and (3) the same dialogues replaced by daily conversation by the Assistant Language Teachers. The results showed that listening to actual movies was the most effective of the 3 curricula for promoting students' intrinsic interest and voluntary engagement in further learning. That group also attained the highest scores on a listening comprehension test. These results support the effectiveness of using English movies to promote students' motivation for listening comprehension.