Abstract

Since the spring of 2003, English Trailers has been a free, online learning environment for students to study English via movie trailers. Movie trailers, which are freely available on the web, are an excellent source of authentic English brimming with natural dialogue, idioms, slang, and other rich examples of language. Aiming to prevent English Trailers from being branded a “drill-and-kill” site, the latest version meshes effective pedagogy and web design to transform this listening skills site from one that tests to one that teaches via a series of interactive pre-listening, listening and post-listening activities. Version 4, available since August 2005, is a major upgrade that utilizes server-side webpage handling to create dynamic content and track student performance. This paper presents first the reasoning behind the design goals of the site and then a description of the main features of the site that can be utilized in the CALL classroom and by the autonomous learner.

Suggested citation