Military Movies by Hollywood: Assisting ELT in ESP Domain

Teaching English for specific purposes (ESP) is a problem in the educational institutions, because the course books available are not sufficient, up-to-date and interesting enough to teach English for specific purposes. This study aimed to see whether or not the use of military movies was effective in teaching military terminology. The experimental group, a class consisted of 23 students, were given a pre-test and a post-test to see their specific vocabulary competence in military terminology before and after the application of military movies. According to the results of post-test the students in experimental group achieved greater scores than the pre-test results compared to the control group. Control group (N=23) was given the same military terminology content through reading worksheets and the content was studied in a classical way in the classroom. Some of the students in experimental group, however, had some troubles in understanding some of the discourse in the movies. In the light of the findings, the instructors teaching military terminology in English are recommended to make use of the large resource available on movies to teach the target terminology. Moreover, anyone who wants to master the terminology on a certain area himself might exploit ICT and movies as rich resources, which might help students to be autonomous learners. Maintaining and developing overall English competence might also be achieved as the result of watching military movies, so the English teachers should consider this resource as an important asset in their teaching arsenal.