A Study on the Role of Context in Using Movies for Second Language Learning: Based on Native-Like Selection and Form-Meaning Pairing

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether context in a movie plays a crucial role in achieving form-meaning pairing. For this purpose, context was divided into three sub-elements: emotional engagement, personal experiences, and story structure, all of which contribute to the effective long-term retention of movie utterances. The study involved five college students who were English majors with intermediate-high English level. They participated in a two-month immersive case study. The material used was <i>Mamma Mia!</i> (Lloyd, 2008), a musical romantic comedy. At the end of the study, the participants completed two tests and submitted two written reports. The results showed that four out of five participants performed well in the first test, a recognition test, while three excelled in the second test, a recall test. In the first written report, all five participants noted that they made mistakes due to mismatched form-meaning pairs. In the second report, they highlighted that effective memorization occurred when the form was closely connected to the relevant meaning. This case study revealed two key insights about the role of context. First, excessive translation disrupts the pairing of form and meaning by significantly distorting the structure of the form. Second, context equally enhances both recognition (meaning) and accurate recall (form).