Elizabeth: The Golden Age: a useful tool in the classrooms

Cinema is an industry that has been growing through the years and this is because most of the people think that movies are a good way of entertaining and learning as well. Through this essay I want to express how useful can be a movie to teach English and develop critical thinking in a dynamic and innovative way. However, I am not going to refer to the movies in general, I just want to focus on the film Elizabeth: the golden age directed by Shekhar Kapur.

This film can be very useful for and English teacher to teach this language. What this movie represents is the courage and the conviction of a queen that can be represented in other people as well, for example the president of our country Michelle Bachelet. So what students can do it is to find examples in our society that are similar to queen Elizabeth and they can explain why, making an analysis of the similarities between the important people in the past, in this case a queen and the important people nowadays, for example a politician or a famous singer.

Students can also reflect on what problems there were in those times and the problems we have to face nowadays. This reflection will help them to see if in the past people had similar problems and to see the way they solved them or if students find that the problems were different they can analyze why those problems are not present today in our society. In conclusion, through this film students can apply critical thinking and reflect a lot about the facts shown in the movie that can easily compared with our times.

I think that this film is not only useful to develop critical thinking but also to teach students some grammar structures. One structure that can be taught through this film is the future “will” because in the movie I could find a lot of scenes that can help students to predict about the future, for example when the guy is trying to shoot Elizabeth. If the teacher freezes this scene students can predict what will happen using the structure will + verb, for example they can say I think the queen will die or I think the man will not shoot.

This movie can be very practical to speak about hypothetical situations as well, using the structure if + would have. For example, students can imagine they are the queen and using this structure they can say what they would have done if they were Queen Elizabeth. They can forms sentences such as if I were the queen I would have sent Catholics to prison or if I were Walter Raleigh I would stayed in England forever, among others.

Vocabulary is something an English teacher has to teach and without a doubt this film is a fun and dynamic way to do it. In this movie there are lots of expressions and collocations that can help students to enlarge their vocabulary, for example in the film Dr. Dee says: “and some will spread their wings like eagles”. In this phrase students can learn that in English people say spread wings instead of extend or stretch, so if they want to say “abrir las alas” they have to use the word spread. Another expression taken from the movie is: “The more gold I took from him the safer you will be”, this structure is very common in English and we, learners of this language, have some problems with it because we tend to translate it into Spanish and it does not make sense if we do this, that is why teachers can show the scene in which Walter Raleigh says this phrase and students can figure out what it means and what it is the equivalent meaning in Spanish without translating literally, so they will learn it in an better way.

As far as I am concerned the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age is a very useful tool to teach English including not only grammar and vocabulary but also critical thinking. Most of the times professors teach grammar and vocabulary in a boring way that it is not motivating for students, so they do not learn it. However, through this film students will feel motivated and also it will easier for them to learn structures of grammar and a lot of vocabulary as well. On the other hand, critical thinking is something that teachers should apply in their classrooms and a good way to do it is through this film that will give students the opportunity to reflect on the past and the similarities with the present. Also students can analyze the movie giving their opinions about it, developing critical thinking.