B1 – Cinema of the Future

This is the third lesson of the Preply course – Culture Vulture. This lesson is based on a short video on the history of cinema and everchanging technology which affects people’s watching habits. It’s a perfect opportunity for students to learn something more about the cinema while talking about their film preferences and cinema habits.

The first two lessons, The Power of Music and Are you a Bookworm?, focused on speaking without any mention of grammar, so I decided to change it this time. Given that the topic is on the history of cinema and speculates its unknown future, I thought that I shouldn’t miss this chance and do a short revision of Future Simple for predictions.

This lesson consists of two files, a PDF presentation and a short lesson plan with all the answers, which can be downloaded at the end of the post.

The lesson starts with a pair discussion. Students look at four movie posters and match them with the film genres (action, comedy, documentary and horror). After that, they discuss if they have seen any of those movies and if yes, what they thought about them. If they haven’t watched any of them, you can ask them which one they’d like to watch based on the poster and genre. Collect answers from different groups and ask each student to think about film genres they can’t stand, love and are (not) really into. It is a good time to elicit more genres as needed.

Say that you are going to watch a video about the history and the future of cinema. Students go back to their original pairs and go over the quiz questions, predicting the answers. It’s a perfect time to explain any new words which may impede understanding of the video. Once everyone’s got their answers, play the video What is the Future of Cinema by Behind the News. Afterwards, go over the answers one more time to make sure that everyone understood the task. Discuss if any of the answers surprised the students.

If you have more time, you can watch the video twice and talk about the speaker’s attitude regarding the survival of cinemas in the future. If the video is too difficult, you can always watch it with the subtitles, or print out the transcript which can be found under the YouTube video.

After the video, I decided to do a quick grammar revision. Since this class was done with intermediate students, I let them tell me what they know about the use and the structure of Future Simple. I started by showing a sentence predicting the future of cinemas, I think that in the future, people won’t go to the cinema anymore. I asked a few questions to check the understanding and let students complete five sentences using Future Simple to drill the structure. Of course, there are many other uses of Future Simple, but because of the time limit, we only focused on predictions based on no evidence.

Since the group lessons on Preply are supposed to focus on speaking, I thought that it was time to go back to it. Look at four questions about cinemas of the future and answer them as a group. Monitor students’ answers closely and provide them with feedback, making sure that they use the correct forms of Future Simple. It’s a fun activity that helps students get creative with their answers.

To finish the class, I decided to give students some space and let them talk about their film preferences. Present students with an imaginary situation in which they are planning to go to the cinema at the weekend. They talk together and decide which of the three movies (a romantic comedy, a documentary, or an action film) would be the best option for both. Give them some time to form strong arguments and finish this activity by seeing which of the three films was the best choice for all pairs.

In case you finish a bit too early, I prepared one more slide with five general questions about films, which should give you something extra to do until the end of the class. This, of course, can be altered or replaced by any other activity as needed, for example, 20 questions to guess a film or an actor.

What is your favourite film? What do you think will happen with cinemas in the future?📽️