Are We Glamorizing Their Future Profession? The Justification of Use of Legal Series While Teaching Students of Law
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | In many legal English syllabi for law undergraduates, activities including clips from legal dramas and comedies are used in order to illustrate legal or linguistic issues and to provide enjoyable listening comprehension exercises. However, some might raise the objection that since legal series do not portray the legal profession accurately, they give the students a distorted view of their future careers, not being “authentic” enough. This paper argues that students do realize that video clips present a fictional world and that their future is not likely to be as glamorous as what is presented to them in films. In spite of that, students enjoy the relevant video clips and the language-learning activities based on such videos because all these enliven the lessons, as long as they are used in a meaningful context. It is argued that using video clips in the classroom is crucial for enhancing students’ motivation, particularly because learning legal English is not an easy task. |