The Use of Animated Films in EFL Teaching: A Comparison of Their Pedagogical Potential with Textbook Materials in Taiwanese Elementary Schools

Abstract

The teaching of English in the primary schools across Taiwan has a ten-year history; therefore, it is appropriate at this time to look closely at the materials used and evaluate them for their effectiveness. In an EFL learning context such as Taiwan, where authentic and appropriate conversational examples are for the most part insufficient, how teachers remedy the deficiencies of textbook materials with supplementary materials is crucial. Video/film is one of the frequently used media cited by researchers to bring language models as well as cultural content into the EFL classroom. While the results of some relevant research seem promising (Grant & Starks, 2001; Rose, 2001; Jeon, 2003; Tatsuki et al., 2006), aspects of language used in film should be analyzed to determine their appropriateness for use in EFL classrooms. Among the most basic functions learned in primary school English are 1) greetings and 2) compliments, and 3) compliment responses (C & CRs). From the perspective of Speech Act Theory (Austin, 1962), the present study compared examples of these three speech acts in both textbook materials and animated films and investigated the pedagogical potential of using animated films in EFL teaching in the absence of satisfactory exposure to authentic language input. First, it reviewed the current textbook materials by collecting dialogues from the most frequently used series in elementary schools in a northern area in Taiwan. Second, in order to determine the adequacy of textbook materials, transcripts of five animated films were analyzed to compare frequency of occurrence of greetings and C & CRs in the textbook materials and animated films, and to investigate the potential of using animated films at the elementary school level. Detailed criteria of selection of textbook materials and animated films, and corpora of each source were set up and analyzed to discover the following: 1) the varieties of “greetings”, 2) the varieties of “C & CRs”, and 3) the pedagogical potential of using animated films to supplement textbook materials. Findings in the present study corroborate the pedagogical potential of using animated films to supplement textbook materials from the fact that both quantitatively and qualitatively and from both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic perspectives, animated films excel textbook materials in all areas except the quantities in greetings, imbalanced distribution of gender and topic choice, and the fewest quantities and varieties of examples in CRs. If future study or teaching practice is seeking further refinement to avoid unexpected shortages of speech examples, it is suggested in the present study that a clearer selection criteria of animated films through teachers’ teamwork to set up film language corpora in order to incorporate animated films into curriculum, the effect of using animated films to supplement textbook materials can then be maximized.