la mort aux trousses

In France, the Conseil Général is responsible for funding French middle schools. A part of their subsidies is le collège au cinéma, a program where the students in 3ème go see 3 movies a year, selected by their teachers. I was so excited when I learned that they were going to see “North by Northwest.” The timing was right for me to start a new lesson, so I quickly found some good activities associated with going to the movies – and even a couple of ESL activities designed around the one they were going to see. We started a few days before, working on general vocabulary: genre, plot, setting, actors and reviews. Because we played a sort of game where I described movies and asked them to give me the title, the kids actually paid attention for once! It didn’t hurt that they got a cool sticker when they participated. Things were going better than most lessons this year and I finally felt like we were making progress. And then, they saw the movie. Those who paid attention said they were disappointed with 1959-quality and most said they didn’t like it. How can they not?! Like the first time they went to the cinema this year, their behavior was less than exemplary, and we’re lucky that it was only our students in the audience. I couldn’t help but wonder if they would act the same at a normal film. Their biggest complaint was that the film was in English – reading subtitles is something that most 14-year olds around the world can’t seem to enjoy. The following day, I still tried to make a good lesson out of it, doing a worksheet on the plot of the movie and working on vocabulary about special effects, subtitles and specific scenes from the film. At least they can recognize the UN building and Mount Rushmore now, and they know what a crop duster is.