Jason Blean, Spain
The best films in my experience were Wallace and Gromit movies - I used these with teens and they loved them. They also have accompanying teachers' and students´ workbooks. I have also used "Waking Ned" and "In the name of the father". However although they liked the films their pedagogical value was low. The accents were too difficult for many of them. I gave them worksheets with the latter two asking them to describe what happened relating to a piece of dialogue in the film. I know of a teacher in Chile who also used this approach with "Philadelphia" to great effect.

I never use Disney films as I don´t believe its responsible to present magic as harmless fun to children.

Fitch, Portugal
I've used films in class quite a lot - from short clips to full length feature films spread over a number of weeks. One thing I've learnt from doing this is to separate the dialogue from the visual images: the images are so strong that they will overwhelm precise understanding of dialogue if treated together. However, if you deal first with sections of the dialogue - either as written text, or as a listening exercise perhaps - before viewing the film, the visual impact actually reinforces the pre-taught language. I can spend 40 minutes on a section of dialogue, and then follow this with just 10 minutes of film to finish. Language retention seems very high. Oh, another important tip, in my opinio, never give students worksheets to do while watching unless it is a very simple box-ticking kind of exercise.

Christine, Singapore
I've been using films to teach EFL for a long time. My favourites are animations (especially Disney's for obvious reasons). I'll give them a set of questions to answer and they vary from content-based questions to discussion questions focusing on the themes of the films.

Then we'll discuss the questions. The songs in the movies are excellent for listening comprehension practice too. My students fell in love with meaningful songs like 'God Help the Outcasts' and had a good laugh over songs like 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'
Good luck with your films!

Maria Greckl, Germany
Dear Pardis,
You can give your students true and false statements about the film and they will have to find out which one is correct and which one is wrong.If there are useful phrases or idioms to be heard let your students listen for them and take a note.

G. Padma, India
I have used films with adult learners with zero level English in Gujarat, India. I have found two ways which can be useful.
1. I used recorded cassettes of the cartoon "Heidi" in the
classroom. I used to stop the film at different points and then question the students about a particular issue. An example of this: When Heidi is staying with her friend in the city, the friend's grandmother comes visiting. The housekeeper teachers Heidi how to greet the grandmother and bow to her, etc. I stopped the cassette at this point and asked the students to demonstrate different ways of greeting we use in English - basic things like 'good-morning', etc, and taking it further like how to respond to 'how are you?' and 'how do you do?' The amount of extension this makes possible is in the hands of the teacher.

Other points to pick up, discuss and practice could be, a particular usage, certain registers (eg. courtroom), table manners, partying, etc. In lower classes, dress, food, people, greetings, going out, etiquette - anything can be used.

The main thing is to discuss it and then practice the structure/vocabulary/usage.

2. The second is to discuss ideas with the students using films. Stop the film at particularly critical points and let the students come out with what they feel or how they react to what is happening. At the basic level, children could react to a 'Tom and Jerry' cartoon - stop at a point and ask students to describe what they see, predict what would happen next, describe what has gone before, compare with another one they haqve seen, or even personal experiences with cats, dogs, pets, etc. At the higher level, use somehting like 'To Sir, With Love', Stop at points like when the protagonist accepts a teaching job offer, and let the students discuss anyhting from racial discrimination to whether human beings have choices, and what factors lead us to take up certain jobs. The focus can be kept with what is being taught otherwise.

Mohammad Etedali, Iran
Regarding the use of films in an EFL setting, I use them as a sort of warm-up activity. I choose them based on the topic that I am plannig to teach and show them before I start teaching that particular topic.

Alexander Pravko, Belarus
We often ask and tell about some things or event using standard expressions. Let your students practice them as well as description skills.

Students must retell an episode of a movie in as many details as possible in order for the next group to be able to tell it to you.

Revise expressions like "Is it worth seeing?" "What about the bad guy?" etc. also indirect speech: "I haven't seen a friend of mine told me…"

Divide the class in two groups. Show an episode of a movie to one of the groups. Some feature films have 1-5 minutes of fast action as an introduction. They are perfect for this game. Students of the second group have to learn as much as possible asking the students who have seen the movie. Then they tell all they found out to you. You try to confuse them asking important things that they missed. At last you tell all you know about the movie. Then you show the episode to check how close they were, who misunderstood, who was wrong in description.