Effectiveness of EFL Students’ Experiential Learning With Theme-Based Short Film Projects: A Pilot Study

As edutainment, films and videos have been of considerable assistance to English language teaching and learning (Kieran Donaghy, 2014 and Rusma Kalra, 2017). However, the use of films in class primarily allows of reactive learning rather than proactive learning. The pilot study examines the effectiveness of proactively experiential learning with theme-based short film projects, including voice acting, movie dubbing, script writing and screen acting, towards EFL students’ all-round development as regards (1) language competency, (2) personal quality, and (3) technology literacy. A quantitative research questionnaire was distributed to a class of 44 high school students and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 of them. The initial findings suggest that the implementation of these multifaceted projects with 4 sequential phases is beneficial to both language skills, i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing and language components, i.e. pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar. With theme-based materials, this experiential learning process heightens awareness of current issues, develops teamwork skills, boosts self-confidence and sparks collective creativity among participants. It is also found that the projects promote the exploitation of advanced technology like electronic devices, websites and software programs for language learning and filmmaking. The evaluation procedures and preliminary results from the pilot study highlight a potential to administer a large-scale research project.