‘That’s my favourite moment,” says Tanya Driver, as she points to the large screen facing her students. At Keighley College, students laugh along to the antics of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean, more specifically the part when Mr Bean is visiting his dentist. The favourite moment in question is when Mr Bean’s chair is “reclining”, which Tanya enunciates and writes on the whiteboard as students jot down the word.
This is an entry level two ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) class at Keighley College in West Yorkshire. Driver has been teaching English to students from all walks of life for 22 years. She usually shows five to six forms of TV and film to the students in each academic year, which, as well as Mr Bean, includes shows such as Inside No 9 and films such as the 1988 Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Twins. On this occasion, the Mr Bean episode is followed by a group discussion about the different verbs and phrases used, as Driver asks students to describe the wacky scenarios in which Mr Bean finds himself.
There are many ESOL classes like this; according to data published by the government, 144,560 students signed up for one in England last year.
Notably, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the college has welcomed many Ukrainian students, including three who are all coincidentally named Iryna: Iryna Zhydetska, Iryna Bielikova and Iryna Baltiuk. They are among the many who attend the college, which comprises a “nice mixture of nationalities”, according to Driver, including a range of backgrounds such as Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Like the other Ukrainian students in the class, Iryna Zhydetska, 65, has lived in England for two years, since the invasion. Zhydetska says she learned English when she was younger, but it faded as time passed. For her, the use of TV and films in the classroom is a useful tool to help with language learning. “It’s good practice because when I first came I didn’t understand what the people around me were talking about, nothing, but now I understand some words, some sentences. Not all, but some.” She says she is a fan of TV gardening, and uses subtitles to aid her understanding. “I listen to the show, and if I don’t understand what they say I read and translate.”
Similarly, for Iryna Bielikova, 39, it has taken a while to get used to speaking English more frequently as she adapts to her new home: “Sometimes I make mistakes but I understand I need time and a little more practice.” Recently, along with her children, she watched Inside Out 2 at the cinema. Iryna Baltiuk, also 39, learned English in school in Ukraine but was well out of practice when she arrived in England. British reality shows, such as I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, are “very helpful”, she says, especially when getting used to the UK’s many accents.
This in fact ties into a common roadblock that Driver has encountered, leading to her incorporating TV and films into her teaching; many students, she says, arrive with a good level of reading and writing but often have problems with understanding people talking. “Students often have strong literacy skills, but they don’t understand native speakers, the Yorkshire accent. That’s where they are stuck: you can say something but when someone speaks back, you don’t understand, so the conversation is over. The main benefit of watching movies is to train their ear to understand more.”
John Gray, professor of applied linguistics and education at UCL says that language learners largely find it straightforward to get to a certain level of English, but that it gets gradually more difficult. “I would say film is potentially a very useful tool for use in the second-language classroom, without a doubt. The reason being it’s what we would call a very rich source of input, because to learn a language you have to have exposure to masses of input.
“There is the opportunity to eavesdrop on conversations in the language. And then if the film is well chosen it can also be extremely motivating for the students that you are working with.”
Local organisations are happy to meet the demand for films for people studying English as a second language. Chris Fell, director of the Leeds film festival which takes place in November, says that feedback forms showed many filmgoers watch films to supplement their language-learning. “A lot of people commented they love hearing languages that they might not have heard before. And many were seeing films in a language that they were learning, to supplement what they were already doing.”