Training English through the use of differences between Japanese subtitles and English scripts of movies

Abstract

There are some differences between Japanese subtitles and the English scripts of movies . Those differences stem from the cultures or the mother tongues. It is important to teach those differences and using movies is a very effective way. I chose the movie "Running on Empty" for our third year high school students because some of the situations the hero faces seem to be shared with what my students face at the same age of life. I had students translate some parts of the English script into Japanese so that they could learn the differences between them. My finding is that reading English is not always an uninteresting task for students. Because most of the students liked that movie, they were willing to look up words in the dictionary while they were reading the English script. Students also learned about cultural differences and idioms while comparing the scripts.