"Elizabeth" (The Golden Age)

Is well kown that for English teachers is very difficult trying to teach a subject that most of the times contains negative factors that makes it seem boring. A good example of this is the curriculum or the norms stablished by schools. These rules brings a lot of negative consecuences for those teachers who really want to make their students learn, because all these limits imposed can restrict creativity.
Despite of all these disadvantages there are other ways to get students' attention in order to introduce them into the language world. For this reason we must have into account their concerns and interests, in that way think about creating activities like listening music or talking about topics that they are interested in. Another resource that is involved on these categories is the common taste for watching movies which usually transcends all ages. That's why the film “Elizabeth” (The Golden Age) represent a good tool for teachers who want to apply new alternatives and resources to expand language and knowledge. Through this film you as teacher will have the chance to put together interests related to language learning (English in this case), and also appealing to instill students curiousity about history. By using this resource teachers can achieve many goals at once.

Sometimes teachers have the will to try new methodologies with their learners but they can´t figure out how or through which activities accomplish it. If that is your case let me tell you that a good option is watching the movie that I mentioned before “Elizabeth” (The Golden Age). This movie is not only appropriate because it is spoken in English as you could have imagine immediately, it also has a lot of interesting information about England, the importance of Elizabeth as a queen, the kind of language used in that period and even most important how this has been changing and evolving through all these years. Students can also find relevant cultural information to acomplish a better understanding of a foreign language. These points are relevant because a subjec shouldn´t be based only in grammar, otherwhise it would become tedious and repetitive, it must be also focus on general information about cuture and context.

Children tend to see English as one more of the many subjects that they have at scool, and most of the times they are concern about passing the course but actually they don’t feel curiosity to learn anything by themself or to look for extra information about grammar, culture, or vocabulary. That’s why this movie is a good oportunity to develop a new and entertaining way to get close students with language and also you can find a lot of advantages, for exaple stimulate children curiosity in that period of history where migration brought many cultural changes for UK. In terms of language they can learn that immigrants had a strong impact because they brought with them new accents, rhythms, sounds and vocabulary in their way of speaking, so they obviously made changes in the pronunciation and even spelling of some words that perpetuated through the time and keeps constantly changing.
A look more focused in History reveals the importance to the mixture of cultures in agronomy, economy, social organization and customs, as it is shown in the movie, different food and articles like potatoes and tobacco were incorporated to the counties as a result of mercantilism. Many things changed during Elizabeth kingdom: religion, the relationship between Brithis and Spain, migration and norms that were stablished to de crown long ago, like the idea that the queen need a husband to gobern the country.
All this information is important and also interesting, and the film “Elizabeth” could be a good chance to invite your students to discover through this movie a new way to learn.

It's good for learners know the root of what they are lerning, in that way they’ll understand deeply and clearly the subject, and also is useful for them as persons to expand their knowledge about other cultures.
In my opinion, in ocations techers tend to underestimate children skills, they assume that certain topics or information won’t be interesting for students or in accations they think that students won’t understand, but that is only because they don’t have expectations about them, and it’s also easy for teachers to think in that way, because that means that they don’t have to invest any effort preparing activities or new ways of teaching.
It doesn´t matter if you haven´t try this before, you only have to keep in mind that as teacher you need to improve your resources and the movie “Elizabeth” (The Golden Age) is an excellent tool to make your students experience something new and also learn more about the language and its story.

"Modern Times"

This is a film that reveals the difficult conditions that the working class had to pass as a result of the great depression that invaded the country. Here is shown the operation of factories and mass production, in which Charlot (Charles Chaplin) is one worker of the factory. In my point of view industrialization and modernity affected people in their lifestyle because for example we could realize of this in Charlot's behavior, after doing the same repetitive work day by day he suffered a nervous breakdown. This situation led him to a series of misfortunes. One of this is that he is arrested by mistake, and once he is released he discover that life outside was so much worse than he remembered, that's why he tries to return to jail.
This make think in the submissions that workers must accept most of the time in order to keep their jobs.
Some changes that modernity brought to people’s life is fear of losing their jobs, because as I mentioned before, with modernity also came new machinery that displaced the handiwork of the man. This also caused many layoffs and with this much poverty too.

In conclusion I believe this movie takes a critical look at society about the Industrial Revolution. But at the same time has an optimistic outlook constantly looking for happiness despite of life conditions.

"Elizabeth" (The Golden Age)

In my opion this is a very good movie, in which it is shown the strength of this woman who had the enormous responsibility to be the Queen of England.
Elizabeth becomes protestant because she wanted to reign alone, without the need of a man at her side, and that's why she needed to finish with the traditions of Catholicism.
As a result of this, she ended the relationship that existed so far between Spain and Britain. Despite her condition as Protestant she didn´t kill or punish any Catholic, she loved his people and above all wanted to protect them.

Another interesting thing that happened in her reign was the fact that she realized the benefits that could derive from other territories, like potatoes and tobacco as we could see in a scene of the film.

As a personal observation, I think she is a pretty brave and intelligent woman because she challenged customs that were established many years before of her reign. She had to face many conflicts but she always showed fortitude and determination to her decisions.
She showed a deep love for her country and defended it. And was consequent with this, calling herself the "Virgin Queen". She never had a husband or children, because as she said her only concern was absolutely destinated to Britain.

“Natives & Immigrants”

I think that through the history the different cultures has been forced to change their customs as a result of immigrants. We can realize of this, in the way that when they get to a new country they also bring a significant number of features of their own cultures.
We can see this also in the text that we read "The Story of England" where we could realize how important has always been the use of language, and also the importance of eduacción in peoples lives.
I think the emergence of new civilizations brings good and bad consequences. The mixture of cultures can be a form of acquire knowledge about formas of organization, agriculture, customs and so on.
in the case of United kigdom is kind of the same, the mixture of different cultures brought positive and negative consequences for the country.
Generally speaking it seems to me that the exchange of cultures is good, in the way that we are all human beings and we can learn very much from each other, in order to have more knowlwdge and grow up as person.

"Expectations for this course"

I think that my expectations for this course is get to know as much as possible the culture and civilization of Gran Bretaña and United States, I think that it would be very useful for all of us, as future english teachers because is not enough having the knowlwdge about the language itself, is necesary too understand the culture of a country, in this way we will understand in a better way their vocabulary according to their customs, and I think it is important to know the culture because that way learner can get close to the language and in the futire woul be trained to transfer that knowledge to their students.