L2 Journal: An Open Access Refereed Journal for World Language Educators

This paper begins by arguing that the time has come for film, and film clips in particular, to take on a more central place in the foreign language curriculum. It describes in some detail the Library of Foreign Language Film Clips, a database of 10,000+ clips taken from foreign language feature films and tagged for the spoken vocabulary and for cultural, discourse, and linguistic features prominent in the clip. A number of issues that were confronted in the process of developing the database are described. Three ways in which film clips might be incorporated in the foreign language curriculum are then discussed: 1) by focusing on the spoken language; 2) by focusing on the clip as a representation of the behaviors or values of L2 speakers; and 3) by focusing on the clip as a text, whose meaning is created by the filmic devices and language spoken in the clip.