Using films and TV series for ESP teaching: A multimodal perspective

This paper presents the results of a project carried out at the Language Centre of the University of Pisa in partnership with the Language Centre of the University of California at Berkeley to collaborate in the development of the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips (LFLFC), which aims to promote the learning of language and culture through films. A selection of clips cut from films and TV series was purposefully chosen as they pertain to different genres and are characterised by the use of English in specialised domains (i.e., law, politics, economics, tourism, and medicine). They are used to show how various semiotic resources work together to construct meaning in ESP and how they can provide useful tools for research and teaching in ESP contexts. In language teaching, a multimodal approach can help students learn to exploit modes beyond verbal language (e.g., visual, gestural, and spatial) to both understand and produce texts in the target language more effectively. This becomes particularly important in situated communicative contexts where domain-specific discursive, pragmatic, and cultural features can create significant obstacles for language learners.