EFL College Students' Learning Experiences during Film-based Reading Class: Focused on the Analysis of Students' Reflective Journals

In the age of information, newly produced knowledge is mostly written in English. Therefore, there has been a strong demand for English language learning in the EFL context. However, most EFL learners possess a lack of interest and motivation in the text-based reading class. In this educational context, film is one of the most widely used materials in English reading classes considering that modern learners are predominantly familiar with various audiovisual materials. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Korean EFL learners experienced in the film-based reading class. Specifically, this study aims to analyze the EFL students' perceptions about the class and learning strategies that they used during the class. In order to comprehensively interpret the EFL learners' experiences in the classroom, a coding system consisting of five categories was developed: report, emotion, reflection, evaluation, future plans. The results of data analysis showed that the use of movies in English reading classes had positive effects on reading comprehension and inference of word meaning. The most frequently used learning strategies were affective strategies which helped them control their emotion, attitude, motivations and values, whereas memorization strategies were rarely used. In this respect, this study suggests that the use of movies in the EFL reading classroom encourage students' attention and help them obtain and activate schema which is useful in gaining a better understanding of text-based reading materials.