This article was written by Camryn Yi of Richard Montgomery High School
Everyone enjoys watching movies from time to time. Whether watching alone to destress after a long and tiring day or watching them with friends, movies are seen as a simple and enjoyable leisure activity, although many students don’t have the luxury to watch movies everyday due to the hours they need to spend on their school work. However, you are able to learn literature through watching films.
When teaching literature, using movies is a way of teaching students how to analyze literary text. Instead of just reading a book and analysing the written text, movies can be analyzed and interpreted similarly to traditional literature (Study.com). Teachers and even parents can use movies and film to teach their students important literary skills.
Film as literature for parents
According to Psychowith6.com (a website written by a psychologist and homeschooling mother, Dr. Melanie Wilson), movies are able to teach children literary concepts like character development, plot, setting and much more. Additionally, parents homeschooling their children have used movies to help their children’s literature analyzing skills, and parents new to homeschooling are encouraged to use movies when teaching literature. According to 7sistershomeschool.com, when applying literary analysis skills to studying movies, it works similarly to studying a book.
Film as literature for teachers
Not only homeschooling, but other public schools and colleges across the U.S. as well as different countries use the study of movies in their literature course. Film as Literature itself is a class that many schools have as an elective course for an English credit. This class is offered in high school as well as college. On Psychowith6.com, Dr. Wilson gives an example of her son being encouraged to take the Film as Literature course as a way of alleviating his schedule from his other heavy reading AP classes. It offers English credits and helps students with their literature skills.
Although,watching movies as a way of learning literature may seem unbeneficial to improving a child's literature skills, it actually helps students grow and strengthen their literature skills by using critical thinking when watching a movie. According to Study.com, movie adaptations of written literature can help enhance students’ reading comprehension, historical movies can help students understand historical events and topics and movies as an art form can give students perspective into analyzing composition. Just using movies in an educational environment can help students grow as stronger readers and give them a better understanding of literature itself. Additionally, it helps many struggling or unmotivated readers who are busy with school work to develop and strengthen their literary analysis skills while reducing the stress on the reader (7sistershomeschool.com).
Conclusion
In conclusion, incoroparating and encouraging the use of movies in literature classes is very beneficial for students and can help those who are struggling, overwhelmed with schoolwork or are unmotivated readers. Movies are like visual literature that can teach and help students understand character development, plot and many other literature analysis skills. Overall, movies as literature show that they are not only for leisure activity, but can also be used to teach students and help those develop literature skills they will need in the future.
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