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Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: 1,0, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Institut für Didaktik der englischen Sprache und Literatur), language: English, abstract: In present-day classrooms there are a lot of different forms of media in use. The mostly used types of media are surely the black board and the overhead projector. If one defines media in a very strict sense the teacher himself is of course the most frequently used medium. Besides these well-known types of media there are several others, too. Maier divides the whole class of media into three categories: mass-media, individual media and media for teaching purposes. The mass-media contains all types of media which are suitable to address a great amount of people at one time so for example newspapers, television, radio or movies. The individual media transports contents which are mostly meant for one special person or a small group. Maier mentions amongst others the telephone, letters, e-mails or private photos. Last Meier lists the media for teaching which means all types of media that can be used to teach particular topics.The one type of media which will be examined a bit closer is the movies as a media for various teaching purposes. In former times movies were not used very often because their acquirement and the technical equipment were both very expensive. Therefore not many schools had such possibilities. But today films have become cheaper and even more accessible. Most schools have mobile DVD- / Television-units or sometimes even video projectors in some classrooms so it is no longer as difficult to view films with a whole class like it was years ago.Besides the goal of cross-cultural communicative competence which is the highest aim of language learning - according to the educational standards - there are several other competences the students have to learn not least to attain this top goal. One of these other competences is the so-called Sachkompetenz which itself can be divided into four skills: speaking and writing - to produce something - and reading and listening comprehension for understanding the language. In recent literature as well as in the curriculum there is mentioned a fifth skill: mediation i.e. the transfer of information from one language into another either in written form or orally.
