Técnicas cinematográficas en el aula de educación primariauna propuesta para la mejora de la pronunciación inglesa

Abstract

Mastering a right level of the communicative competence in English is a goal to be achieved in our country. According to evidence of recent studies, the current English level situation in Spain is still far behind other European countries. Oral expression is one of the most affected in this situation since written skills are promoted yet over the first one. Proper expression and fluency are two essential components for good development of oral expression. Notwithstanding, within a proper expression, pronunciation is an element that has been very little worked on in the English classroom. Inside the linguistic competences that language learners must acquire, the CEFR considers phonological competence, highlighting its importance for good communication. A phonological competence, which is poorly or wrongly developed, leads to communicative situations with loss of information and misunderstandings, hindering and breaking down any communicative process. Part of the issue of this lack of development of communicative competence has been observed to come from the existence of fossilized errors of elemental words, which were not adequately corrected from the stage of Primary Education. Hence, this research will focus on providing a basis in the form of a methodological proposal for the work on these phonetic difficulties in the last year of Primary Education, a determining level that precedes the change to Secondary Education. It is well known that the use of cinema has always been an ideal resource in teaching foreign languages. Albeit, little has been explored about the full possibilities it can offer using it from an immersive perspective, that is to say, from the creative and cultural involvement of pupils in filmmaking in an EFL teaching-learning context. Aware of the mighty attraction the cinematographic world has, in this piece of research an innovative project is developed and presented. Within, a playful and motivating space is offered by means of the use of cinematographic techniques, where creativity, emotion, motivation and the cultural component of literature are linked, providing a meaningful dynamic and fun context, and thus, awakening pupils' interest in the development and evolution of their phonological competence in their oral expression. Hence, this research focuses on educational practice in the EFL classroom of Primary Education in a bilingual school from Región de Murcia, with sixth-grade pupils, aged 11-12 years, with the aim of exploring the educational possibilities offered by film and literature as teaching resources in the improvement of phonetic skill performance of English. The methodology used in this study is action-research, being an empirical-analytical investigation, with a quasi-experimental design, using mixed data collection methods. Thus, the present research followed the subsequent steps: a) to collect information about opinion, tastes and interest of film and literature in both sixth- grade-primary-school pupils and teachers, b) to identify the most frequent mistakes and difficulties of pronunciation in pupils, c) to design and implement the designed didactic proposal, and d) to analyze its outcomes in terms of its effectiveness in solving the pronunciation difficulties. The results obtained after the implementation of the didactic model show a significant improvement in participants' pronunciation performance. They also confirm an increase in motivation levels for learning EFL and a high development degree of creativity in pupils. Moreover, there values of group cohesion have been promoted. These results show that the didactic proposal developed in this study is an excellent and effective model for TEFL, being a contextualized way to work on the phonological competence. Finally, the findings of this study may shed light and be useful for teaching professionals in the field of TEFL and future research. Keywords: Primary education; Language teaching; English; Oral expression; Pronunciation; Film techniques.