The Impact of Shakespeare Quotation: How to Teach English Through The Man Without a Face

Abstract

Focusing on the advantages of using films for ESL learning, this paper ultimately offers a discussion of teachers’ strategies for using literary intertextuality in a film to stimulate students’ interest. Expanding cultural/intellectual knowledge behind a scene helps students to focus on the psychological background of a certain character. The dynamism of The Man Without a Face (Gibson, 1993), in this sense, lies in the advantage that fruitfully includes a particular scene where Justin McLeod, one of the main characters, quotes Shakespeare’s lines from The Merchant of Venice. Taking three scenes from The Man Without a Face, this paper demonstrates how to choose interesting scenes from the target film, how to create questions about the story and the characters, and, most importantly, how to offer a point of view to analyze the film with the help of the film’s intertext with another cultural source, such as Shakespeare’s writing. Consequently, the introduction of Shakespeare’s play through The Man Without a Face may offer an opportunity to learn English with the cultural heritage of English literature. Learning language with the knowledge of culture can inspire students to make a bridge between the language and human thoughts.