INTERVIEW: DR CARMEN HERRERO, CO-DIRECTOR OF FILTA
If I could turn back the hands of time I may consider choosing different subjects when I was in high school. Although I am happy with the decisions I did make and where I've ended up now, having a legitimate reason to watch films and be rewarded with grades or opportunities to hone my film-making skills still sounds oh-so appealing to me. When I attended the screening of The Golden Dream a while back and sat in on the Q&A session with its director, I came to realise that some most of the folks in the audience were teachers/lecturers who used films to help educate their students. After allowing the sting of only watching videos about health and safety disasters like Bhopal or Beryl Alpha when I was at uni to ebb away, I begin to ponder what criteria should a film meet for it to be deemed educational. Little did I know that the lovely lady that was sat behind me and asked what I did for a living - after I plucked up the courage to whip out my big girl camera to cover the session - was the person to answer my budding questions.
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After contact details were exchanged and a date to continue our conversation was agreed upon, I was given the chance to find out a bit more on how films are used to teach languages in school. Turns out that the lovely lady, Dr. Carmen Herrero, is a woman who wears many hats and has so much ambition and passion for teaching. Not only is she the Head of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Information & Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), she is also the director of FLAME (Film, Languages and Media in Eduction) Research Centre and the co-founder & co-director of FILTA (Film in Languages Teaching Association). I was in complete awe. I only have one job and I welcome the weekends with open arms so that I can acquire enough energy for the following work week. I don't know how she finds the time to dedicate enough time to each role but I am willing to learn this skill.
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Arming ourselves with our beverage of choice we began to talk at length about her organisations and our love for film. I found out that the main aim of FILTA is to act not only as a rich source of teaching materials for Language teachers all over the world who use film as a teaching aid but to also serve as a means of connecting the teachers and allow for ideas and best practises to be shared with and by all. Founded in 2009 this community now boasts of having more than 2000 members in over 90 countries which is pretty impressive.
The way she described how film was used in the classroom to teach students a certain language made it apparent to me that not only did the students get to watch films as they acquired a new tongue, they were also taught how to critique the films and other forms of media. The use of phones, tablets, laptops and social media outlets are encouraged in the classroom as it engages the kids using things the love, aids in their understanding of marketing and the media. And I found out that the films used at the end of the day needed to have themes that gave the viewers a different perspective of cultural issues within the country and times the film was set in.
I got the opportunity to see some of the workbooks made by teachers for their students based on a couple of foreign films and it definitely made me want to learn a language right there and then. Which I guess is the point. All I remember from the days I had French lessons is 14 yrs old me sat at my desk cramming loads of new words, filling in worksheets, reciting conjugations and writing semi-ok essays. I am pretty sure had French films, tv shows, magazines, novels etc been used as tools to aid my understanding of the language, it would have been in the running to being one of my favourite subjects.
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FILTA is a wonderful community of like-minded people eager to share knowledge and improve the ways in which they teach their students the beauty of learning another language using a multimodal approach. If you are Language teacher interested in finding out more about their ethos, activities, workshops and resources pop on over to their site to register. The great thing about it is that it is as much an online community as it is offline so look out for any workshops that could be taking place near you. Now, I'm off to continue learning how to de-construct a film into its intrinsically linked parts whilst still being enchanted by the story being told.
Mo x