19th October 2021

English dubbing competition, excellent immersive learning is being staged

Recently, the English Division held a movie dubbing competition. This opportunity not only helped students improve their English proficiency, but also enabled them to practice their communication skills and develop team spirit. Let us review this wonderful event.

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The students chose the clips based on their own interests. The types covered a wide range, from TV dramas to cartoons. Although many clips were only two or three minutes in length, the plot was tumultuous and the characters extremely tense, which provided students with various perspectives to show their creativity.

During the preparation process, there were a lot of new and challenging words for the students. They contextualized and learned them piece by piece, which is a good way to learn English. By working on such fun and diverse scripts, it helped the students improve their language abilities. In addition, students learned some authentic English expressions from the movies. They managed to connect what they had learned in class with real life situations.

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In the final contest, students cooperated with each other and rose to the occasion during performances which earned them standing ovations. The panel judged them using four criteria: clarity of voice, pronunciation & accent, synchronization, and passion & emphasis. After the contest, the judges Thomas Hood and Martin McLaughlin commented on the eight performances and also put forward a lot of valuable comments.

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Students showed great drive and vision in preparation of the movie dubbing competition. This opportunity motivated students and enhanced their creativity in a more interesting and novel way. Therefore, English learning is not only confined to the classroom, but can be blended into learning and recreation. Thus, learning can be made sustainable.

Teacher comments

Thomas Hood:The Movie Dubbing contest is a great exploration of language and how it is interpreted. English is not a tonal language, but emphasis, speed, and pitch can change the meaning of sentences entirely. The interplay of speech and silence is also vitally important to how conversations and meanings work, and of course these phenomena are only heightened in a medium like film or television. Our students showed a great deal of initiative, passion, and teamwork recreating or reinventing these film clips, and I hope they continue to practice and experiment with the format in the future.

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Tony Zhu:The Movie Dubbing contest is a great exploration of language and how it is interpreted. English is not a tonal language, but emphasis, speed, and pitch can change the meaning of sentences entirely. The interplay of speech and silence is also vitally important to how conversations and meanings work, and of course these phenomena are only heightened in a medium like film or television. Our students showed a great deal of initiative, passion, and teamwork recreating or reinventing these film clips, and I hope they continue to practice and experiment with the format in the future.

Student feedback

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Sally:The movie dubbing competition was a challenge for us, because there were many roles on the video and many students participated in the competition. In the process of dubbing practice, we needed to keep running to ensure cohesion of our work. Because there were so many people, we even had to rehearse the microphone in advance. Some of the students in our class took part in this competition for the first time, which was a brand new attempt for them, while it was a different experience and challenge for those who had participated before. We all gained a lot. We experienced the hardships in the preparation process, and of course we also felt the sense of achievement while presenting our work.

Xantares Ren:This is the first time I participated in school activities since I joined LYBS. Our class had been working very hard for the contest. Although we are not up to a professional dubbing level, everyone is trying their best to imitate. The atmosphere of our class and the unwillingness to admit defeat made me work harder. Even though my English was not good, I still wanted to contribute to our effort. Regardless of the result of the contest, our 11C students always focus on participation itself and take any challenge seriously. During the contest, I saw that the atmosphere of many classes was both joyful and tense. Seeing the seriousness and unity of my classmates, I feel very happy and excited for more opportunities like this.