English Lessons in a University Using a Movie : For Developing Students’ Pragmatic Skills

The present study examines the effects of lessons utilizing an English movie as teaching material to improve students’ pragmatic knowledge of the English language in an English classroom in a university. Four experimental lessons were conducted to measure their pragmatic knowledge of English. These lessons were designed based on the pragmatic differences between Japanese and English, which were shown in the movie. Through analyzing students’ comments on worksheets and questionnaire surveys, we examined the effects of an English movie as teaching material for improving students’ pragmatic knowledge. The results showed that students learned that the concept of meaning has two different aspects, literal and contextual, and that understanding contextual meaning is necessary to understand the meaning of what is stated in a scene, as well as the quantitative and qualitative improvement of their pragmatic skills to a limited extent