This paper deals with a method to help EFL teachers make a proper choice of a movie as a teaching material at college. The main characteristic of this method is to evaluate a vocabulary level of movies, including Little Women (1933), Citizen Kane (1941), To Have and Have Not (1945) and The Truman Show (1998), on the basis of words which appear in 26 textbooks in English I with a frequency of 5 and more. As a result of statistical analysis, the following conclusions were obtained: (1) The four movies show significant differences from each other in the frequency distribution of words. (2) The words of high frequency in the movies show a higher rate of inclusion in the textbooks than those of low frequency. (3) Among the four movies, there are crucial differences in the proportion of the words which are included in the textbooks to those which are not.

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Videos serve as a framework for structuring context, comfort, and critical thinking (the three Cs) in the EFL classroom. By using videos to facilitate the three Cs, EFL teachers can bridge the gap between theory and practice in many programs and increase classroom discourse. When EFL teachers and students analyze the discourse presented in popular videos and take part in various pre- and post-viewing activities, effective EFL instruction can occur. This paper defines and sets criteria for context, comfort, and critical thinking as well as giving examples of various video clips from popular movies, which are used with the three Cs to teach EFL.

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With the introduction of a digital versatile disk (DVD) recorder and the introduction of a brand-new game hardware, which is also usable as a DVD player, DVD has started to be getting more and more attention. In the U.S., major film companies have already been releasing major films both on DVD and on videocassettes for some time, giving more incentive for the trend. And this rapidly growing interest on DVD is also spreading among people who are related to education. English teachers are no exception. Some of them are already trying to use DVD in classrooms. In this article, I would like to introduce a tip for using DVD effectively in language classrooms in the hope that some of the benefits that DVD have, and also points for further consideration in using DVD will be made clear. First of all, better characteristics of DVD over conventional videocassettes are pointed out. And then an example of classroom activities is introduced. At the end, some points for further consideration are raised.

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To the dawn of the 21St century, advancement of science and technology has brought English education a number of educational aids. Taking place of old standbys like VHS, LD, and CD, the digital versatile disk (DVD hereafter) has appeared as a new and effective instrument. This paper intends to explore the future prospects of English teaching through DVD, which is far more useful than the other previous educational aids. Five functions of DVD utilization are explained so as to take advantage of DVD in teaching English through movies. As research on DVD as an educational aid has only started, a paucity of studies on teaching English via DVD is evident. Therefore I'm sure this study will be very helpful for researchers in their studies on effective English teaching through DVD and English education.

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The Input Hypothesis claims that human acquire language in only one way - by understanding messages, or by receiving 'comprehensible input' (Krashen: 1985,2). This paper reports the classroom practice and the learner's performance which shed light on what comprehensible input is to the learners. Using the video of the movie, 'Titanic' together with its script, we try to search for the effective way to make the input more comprehensible. After the three months classes, students were given a couple of questionnaires, follow-up interviews, and a dictation test in order to see how the classes affected the university EFL learners. Under closer scrutiny, it can be seen that, including 'fast English' pronunciation, comprehensive analysis of the conversation of the authentic material accompanies the instruction results in the gains of meaningful input.

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The concept of 'American dream' is so closely related to American history, environment, customs and manners that understanding its significance is very helpful to learn American culture. This study investigates how well Japanese students learn the concept of 'American dream' through film. Two groups of university students watched the film, Far and Away and were given either of two kinds of assignment; one requires to answer questions and then write an outline of the story, and the other to write only the outline. Out of each group, five students were chosen according to CELT score, and their answer was compared. The analysis showed that all of the ten students completely understood the story-line but they did not pay much attention to why or how events in the story happened. It also showed that their ability to understand the story and write its outline is not influenced by proficiency in English grammar. The results suggested that students can learn an idea unique to another culture through film, and helping them write its outline is useful for a teacher to examine their understanding.

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