Something to Write about: Movies as Materials for Beginning Academic Writing

Abstract

This paper starts with the contention that ESL textbooks for academic writing do not offer adequate instruction on paragraph development. Rather they focus more on paragraph types. As a result, for many students, English academic writing is a style that emphasizes form more than substance. While no one would argue that form is important, it is of little value unless it is used to communicate original content. To unite the two, students need to combine knowledge of form with engaging material to write about. The material must easy enough to understand, but also complex enough to allow for choices, both about the topic of and the information that should be used in the paragraph. The paper presents the idea of using movies as material for practicing the academic writing skills of summarizing and supporting a topic sentence with explanation and examples.