Monday, April 5, 2010

Real Women Have Curves



The week before the Easter holidays we watched this film, Real Women Have Curves, in the classes of 2nd Bachillerato.

I like to watch at least a film per year in the English class (having three classes per week makes it really difficult to watch more than one) Why did I choose this film? First of all, because the languages in the film are English and Spanish and some of the characters use both of them so even students with real problems at understanding English can easily follow the plot of the film. In addition, the main character is an 18-year-old girl who has just finished her high school years, so my students can easily relate to her. Besides, the concept of beauty when referring to women is something that worries many teenage girls and it is good for them to see the topic from a different perspective. Fashion from the point of view of the textile manufacturing and sweat-work is not something teenagers tend to think about but it is important to let them see how this world works. In short, I chose it because you can relate it to many aspects of real life.

This is the trailer of the film:



In fact, some of the students did their oral presentations in class about the film - funnily enough, all of them were women. Xarxa, Coral, Anxos, Andrea and Cristina chose different topics related to the film: Chicanos, murals, Chicano English and Spanglish, religion, women and beauty and the evolution of the concept throughout history...Some of them did it better than the others -speaking in front of a class is not easy stuff, and it´s probably even harder when it is in English...- but they all learnt something, I hope, and I found the expositions very interesting indeed.

Before watching the film, we learnt some vocabulary to help us understand the conversations better. Some of it is in this word cloud. I wonder how much my students can remember...






When Anxos told us about women and the concept of beauty, the first photo she showed was one of the Venus of Willendorf and when I saw this badge I immediately remembered it. Perhaps it wouldn´t be such a bad idea to make it popular!!!

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