This movie dialog ESL activity can be used with any scene from a movie or any compilation of scenes that you would like to show to your class. It gets students listening for what the characters say in the movie and arrange dialog lines in a correct sequence.Adults
Movie Dialog ESL Activity Preparation:
First, research a movie or individual scenes from a film that you think that your students would be interested in. Many full movies can be found on YouTube or Netflix. Find one that is an appropriate length for your lesson. Also, try to choose scenes that have a lot of speaking involved.
Once you have decided on the movie and selected the scenes, watch the material and type out all of the dialog that is said. If you want to cut down on the typing, you could focus on just the lines of dialog that one character says.
Prepare the lines of dialog in a Word doc. Put them in a table so it is easy to divide all of the lines separately.
Print out the document and cut all of the lines of dialog out so that they are on small slips of paper. Shuffle the slips so that they are in a completely random order.
Lastly, shuffle the slips so that they are in a completely random order.
Movie Dialog ESL Activity Guidelines:
At the beginning of class, have a brief discussion about movies, characters and some famous lines from popular films. A good warm-up would be to show a number of quotes from movies and have students guess what movie each line is from.
Next, let the class know that they will be watching a series of scenes from a movie. Their task is to listen and put the lines of dialog that they hear in the correct order.
Put the students in small groups. Hand out the slips of dialog to each group. They can work in teams to arrange the slips or individually if you think it is more appropriate for the class size.
Play the beginning of the first scene and model the task to the class by arranging the first few lines of dialog in order. Elicit the correct answers from the students.
Finally, play the remainder of the scene and have the class arrange the rest of the dialog slips in the correct order. You may have to play the scene a couple more times depending on their level.
Remember to lead feedback and elicit the correct order of the dialog slips.
Follow-Up ESL Activities:
Review any difficulties with pronunciation and go over any vocabulary or expressions that students have problems with from the scenes. You could try playing the Hot Seat Game to review the words as well.
As a follow-up exercise to the listening activity, you could have the class role play the scenes together. They can practice saying the dialog after the listening tasks are completed.