Teaching spoken language through movie corpora.

The present paper highlights that, despite the primacy of spoken language in human society and the significant impact that corpora could have in teaching, both speech and corpora are still underestimated in the class room. Teachers are perhaps unaware of the use to which corpora can be put, and students are generally given fewer explanations about features of spoken language than for written. In line with recent studies which have demonstrated that movie dialogs do not differ much from face-to-face conversation and that movies can be effective tools in the acquisition of spoken language features, some tasks are offered here to encourage learners to acquire the spontaneous features of spoken language through the use of movie corpora. The assumption behind the present tasks is the idea that movies are easier to access and transcribe, compared to the difficulties involved in building up spoken corpora, and they have a universal appeal that should not be underestimated in teaching.