It is generally believed that in EFL contexts like we have in Japan, film or video is a significant source of input for our learners. But how valid are our assumptions? Hasn’t there been a generally uncritical acceptance of these assumptions? What has been missing, however, are studies to see in what ways film and media materials faithfully reflect the ordinary language used in natural conversations in the “real world” and in what ways they might deviate,-if ever so slightly. This presentation will summarize some of the findings of a 4-year project to assemble and analyze a teacher-selected film dialogue corpus as well as look at some of the teaching materials that evolved from the project.
Donna Tatsuki is a Professor at Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, where she teaches graduate courses in English Integrated Skills and Research in English-Language Education. She holds a Bachelor of Music and a Bachelor of Education, both from the University of Toronto, and an M.Ed. and an Ed.D, both from Temple University in Japan. Donna’s research interests include critical discourse analysis and textbook analysis; intercultural comparisons of complaint behavior; and pragmatic corpus analysis and critical research into film and video use in language teaching. She is a member of and regular presenter at TESOL, IPrA, IATEFL, FEELTA, AILA, and AAAL. She was Associate Editor and later Editor of the JALT Journal and served as Director of Records for JALT for 3 years. Among her scholarly publications are numerous articles (in international journals such as System, Journal of Pragmatics and Urban Review) and an edited collection in 2005 titled Pragmatics in Language Learning, Theory, and Practice (Tokyo: JALT). She is currently co-editing (with Noel Houck) 2 volumes on Teaching Pragmatics in the new TESOL Classroom Practice series.
