I borrow videos almost every day. Why? It's simple. I want to communicate with foreigners in English so I want to know how to express what I think.
First-year university student
A library of movies on videotape is a useful addition to any foreign language program. For motivated students, watching movies is a highly enjoyable way of reviewing and expanding foreign language knowledge. For students who have little motivation to learn the foreign language, movies can awaken interest in the foreign culture and its language. For teachers, the library is also a resource when planning lessons that include scenes from movies.
This article begins by looking at three characteristics of videotapes suitable for an English language library, tapes which are (a) without Japanese subtitles, (b) with English captions, and (c) at various levels of English language difficulty. Suggestions for the kind of tapes to buy, and ideas for setting up a selfaccess videotape library based on one I have set up at my university follow. Finally, the two appendices list titles of recommended videotapes and provide contact information for purchasing tapes and library equipment.
Three Characteristics of Suitable Videotapes
Tapes without Japanese subtitles
The videotapes to be watched by English language students should almost certainly be without Japanese subtitles because reading subtitles makes it unnecessary to process the English soundtrack. Tapes of foreign movies made and sold in Japan normally have Japanese subtitles, so the tapes for the foreign language video library must be imported or purchased abroad. Movies in English can be bought in most English-speaking countries. However, they must be compatible with the NTSC video system used in Japan, and this means that, in practice, tapes must be bought in the U.S. or Canada. Movies bought in Britain or Australia can be played in Japan, but require a special PAL system or multi-system video deck. This does not mean, however, that a library must be restricted to movies made in the U.S. and Canada. U.S. video companies sell a full range of British, Australian, and other English language movies in the Japan-compatible NTSC format.
Tapes with English captions
Almost all new and many older movies sold in the U.S. and Canada have closed captions encoded into the videocassette. These captions are closed, that is, invisible, but by buying a decoding machine and plugging it in between the video deck and TV, the closed captions can be opened, that is, displayed on the TV screen. These captions, which usually appear at the bottom of the screen like subtitles, are the words that the characters on screen are speaking (often edited for length). My students at less than advanced levels of English ability invariably report that reading the captions while watching/listening to the movie makes the movie easier to understand, and this is why they almost always prefer to watch videotapes with the captions displayed. Videotapes for sale with closed captions carry either a 
or 
mark on the case. Videotapes recorded from TV in the U.S. may also have closed captions that can be opened with a caption decoder.
Tapes at various difficulty levels
Foreign language movies are challenging for language learners, but are generally far easier to make sense of than foreign language books, magazines, and newspapers. A major reason is that the core spoken vocabulary of a language is smaller than its written vocabulary. In addition, storytelling in movies does not rely on words alone; the images aid comprehension. Finally, movies move relentlessly through "difficult" conversations, focusing students on the general meaning and distracting them from details they may not understand. At the same time, certain movies are easier to understand than others, because the stories are straightforward (as in Disney animated movies, for example), or because there is little specialized vocabulary or slang. Movies that feature children, such as My Girl and Corrina, Corrina, are also often easier to understand because child-child and child-adult conversations use an even smaller vocabulary than adult-adult exchanges. Beginning students will appreciate having a special section set aside in the library of easy to understand movies. Beginners do not have to restrict themselves to easy English movies, however. Any movie that students have already seen in a dubbed or subtitled version becomes easy to follow in the foreign language because they already know the story.
Choosing Tapes for the Library
A videotape library should be built around modern "classics"--that is, movies from the 1980s and 1990s that were popular and are still remembered in Japan. A representative list appears in Appendix A. Purchasing some of these tapes will form an enduringly useful core for your library.
A videotape library that confines itself to the above will probably not set the campus alight, however. Whenever possible, purchase some recent hit movies that have just been released on tape. The ultimate step, if your budget allows, is to regularly add new releases to the library. Instead of a few students borrowing movies every now and then, an up-to-date library attracts a steady clientele who use it on a regular basis to catch the new movies they've been looking forward to, and to practice English in the process.
Where you buy your videotapes will depend on many factors, and three options are listed in Appendix B. Tapes of older classic movies retail for US$10-$30. New video releases are first sold at a higher price (about $100) to video rental stores. Several months later, the price is usually reduced to about $25 or $30 for direct sale. A few very popular movies are initially sold at this lower "sellthrough" price, for example, Disney animated movies, and recently Men in Black, My Best Friend's Wedding, and The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
It is not always easy to find out the titles and dates of new video releases. The U.S. edition of the monthly Premiere magazine lists this information, but does not distinguish between movies that are released at the lower sale price and those at the higher rental price. One solution is to let your video dealer in Japan do the work for you. Nena (see Appendix B) sends regular mailings listing hundreds of the latest releases to its customers. The Bookstore (see Appendix B) imports a handful of the most popular new videos and lists them in its catalog and on its homepage.
Setting up a Self-Access Videotape Library
The form of a video library will depend on one's interpretation of copyright laws. The first decision is whether to lend an original tape or a copy. It makes good sense to loan out a copy in order to protect the purchased original. If the master videotape has been copied from one video deck to another with a caption decoder hooked up in between, the captions can be permanently imprinted on the copy. The school or teacher must decide whether making a copy of a purchased videotape and its captions, in the words of Japan's copyright law, "prejudices unreasonably" the interests of the copyright holder(s) (quoted in Simons, 1995, p. 79). An excellent summary of applicable laws, and guidelines for their interpretation can be found in Copyright Law and Video in the Classroom (Casanave & Simon, 1995).
Budget
An initial purchase of 20 to 30 tapes, at the cost of about 100,000 yen, is probably a minimum for starting a library. An expenditure of 50,000 yen per year thereafter would allow another 15 or so tapes to be added annually (see Appendix B for more exact per tape costs).
Japanese title/running time
Since students know most foreign movies by their Japanese titles, it is helpful to place a small label with the Japanese title on the video case. It is also useful to add a label that clearly shows the running time of the movie. The Japanese title of every foreign movie released in Japan can be found in the Pia Cinema Club Yogahen, a movie encyclopedia published every May. This reference work is also indispensable when students ask you if you have a particular movie but they know only the Japanese title. Useful for locating the exact American title of a movie is Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide, also published annually and available in many foreign bookstores. It is a comprehensive listing of movies released in the US, including plot summary, cast, rating, and running time.
A self-access tape library in action
Welcome to my university office. Lining one wall from floor to ceiling are display racks of videotapes, the shelves labeled by genre (action, comedy, drama, romance) with special sections for easy, difficult, and new movies. There are about 250 tapes on display at any one time, and about 100 others checked out. Students come and go, settling down to watch a tape at one of the video deck/TV/headphone sets in the room, or checking out tapes for home viewing.
Movies can be borrowed for a week except for new movies which can be borrowed for three days, or one day only for a megahit. There is no limit to the number of tapes that can be borrowed at one time. A library card is enclosed in each case together with the videotape (see Figure 1). Students fill out the card and drop it in an alphabetized file drawer. To return a tape, students retrieve the card from the drawer, answer the two questions on the card about how easy and how enjoyable the tape was, and drop the case, with the videotape and card inside, into a return basket. A student assistant later replaces the returned tapes in the display racks. On an average day, about 20 tapes are borrowed and another 20 returned. Some popular tapes, (e.g., Disney animated favorites) have been viewed as many as 100 times each, with the average being about 25 viewings per tape. Once a month, the 10 or so students who are late returning their tapes are telephoned and reminded about it.
Figure 1. Sample library card (with questions to check after viewing)
The videotape library is open to anyone on the campus, students, staff and teachers alike. Enlarged photocopies of video cases, made on convenience store color copy machines for 50 (B4-size paper) or 100 (A3size), make attractive posters for advertising the library. Flyers are also put in the campus mailboxes of all the English teachers at the beginning of the school year, encouraging them to use the library and to tell their students about it.
In the last six years, about four tapes have disappeared and five more fell victim to hungry video decks. This loss seems a small price to pay for a library that is, according to their reports, an important part of the English education of hundreds of students. As the student quoted at the beginning of this article continued,
Watching videos gives me lots of knowledge and shows me how English-speaking people talk to each other in daily language. I think it's important to watch movies in order to master English. I always enjoy it. I'm glad there is a library. Thank you.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to John Abraham, Valerie Benson, Laura MacGregor, and Naoto Usui for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
References
Hirasawa, K. (Ed.). (1997). Pia cinema club yogahen (1997-1998). Tokyo: Pia.
Maltin, L. (Ed.). (1998). Leonard Maltin's movie and video guide. New York: Signet.
Simons, J. D. (1995). Copyright law and video in the classroom. In C. P. Casanave & J. D. Simons (Eds.), Pedagogical perspectives on using films in foreign language classes (Keio University SFC Monograph #4) (pp. 78-90). Fujisawa, Japan: Keio University SFC.
Appendix A
The following is a bilingual list of "modern classic" videotapes, divided into three levels of difficulty. Movies in each section are listed in alphabetical order by their English titles. For descriptions, see Leonard Maltin's Movie Video Guide.
(Editor's note: Japanese titles were included in the original printed article but cannot be listed in The Language Teacher Online at this time.)
- Easy
- Anne of Green Gables
- Anne of Avonlea
- Beethoven
- Corrina, Corrina
- ET
- Father of the Bride
- Free Willy
- Jumanji
- The Mighty Ducks
- Mr. Bean Volume 8: The Best Bits of Mr. Bean
- My Girl
- My Neighbor Totoro
- The Secret Garden
- Sister Act
- Toy Story
- (and Disney animated features, such as)
- Hercules
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame
- Peter Pan
- Moderately difficult
- Awakenings
- Back to the Future
- The Client
- Cocktail
- Cool Runnings
- The Cure
- Dangerous Minds
- Die Hard
- Dumb & Dumber
- Enter the Dragon
- Field of Dreams
- Forrest Gump
- French Kiss
- Ghost
- The Goonies
- Home Alone
- Independence Day
- The Joy Luck Club
- Liar Liar
- Major League
- Mr. Holland's Opus
- Mrs. Doubtfire
- My Life
- Pretty Woman
- The Professional
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Rocky
- Roman Holiday
- Sommersby
- The Sound of Music
- Speed
- Stand by Me
- Star Wars
- Top Gun
- Untamed Heart
- Working Girl
- Difficult
- The Color Purple
- Dead Man Walking
- Fried Green Tomatoes
- Gandhi
- Jurassic Park
- Natural Born Killers
- Reality Bites
- A River Runs Through It
- Schindler's List
- The Shawshank Redemption
- When Harry Met Sally
Appendix B
Purchasing Videotapes and Equipment
Videotapes
Here are three options:
1. Buy tapes in the U.S. This is the cheapest option as you can take advantage of the discounts offered by chain stores such as Wal-Mart and Safeway, or you can buy previously-viewed copies from video rental stores for half the price of new tapes.
2. Buy tapes from importers in Japan. (a) The Bookstore (part of the Foreign Buyers Club) is convenient and relatively cheap. Their catalog and homepage lists the small number of popular titles they have in stock. Any other available video can be special ordered and takes about a month to arrive. Prices vary according to the U.S. dollar-yen exchange rate; at press time, Men in Black was 2,615 yen and Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame 3,359 yen. Prices of specially ordered videos are similar to this. Estimates can be prepared for teachers making school budget requests. Japanese language paperwork and receipts are also available on request. Contact information: 5-15-3F Koyochonaka, Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658-0032; t 078-857-7944; f: 0559; <http://www.fbcusa.com>; <mail@fbcusa.com>. (b) Nena imports the latest movie tapes and sells them for about 5,800 yen each. t: 0120-55-1815; f: 03-3786-6370.
3. Purchase tapes by mail-order from the U.S. Leonard Maltin's Movie Video Guide lists a number of general and specialized mail-order companies, such as Movies Unlimited, 3015 Darnell Rd., Philadelphia, PA 19154; t: 1-215-637-4444; f: -2350; <http: / /www.moviesunlimited.com>; <movies@moviesunlimited.com>.
Closed-caption decoding machines
Various models with various features can be ordered through electrical stores, for example Sanyo SLD300(L), 15,000 yen; Futek FA-400 (which includes the option of enlarging the captions), 22,500 yen. The Bookstore and Nena (see above) also sell decoders. Prospec (t: 0088-22-8877) sells Video Saver Pro VSP777 (?29,800), a caption machine that also cancels the copy guard on original videos. Their (Japanese language) homepage is <http://www.prospec.co.jp>.
Display racks and plastic cases
Wooden racks that are 180 cm tall, 11 cm deep and either 30, 45 or 60 cm wide are manufactured by Mitsuba Gakki, t: 027-261-0141. The 60 cm rack is priced at 13,300 yen. Sturdy plastic cases for individual videotapes can be ordered in lots of 100 (16,000 yen) from Maruzen (Yokohama), t: 045-212-2031.