Movie-generated EFL writing: Discovering the act of writing through visual literacy practices

The present article explores the idea of using movies in EFL classrooms to develop studentsʹ writing skill. In this qualitative study, 15 EFL learners were engaged in different writing activities in a contextualized form of movies, meaning that the films acted as text-books, and activities were designed based on the contexts of the films. Taking an action research design and by relying on different sources to enrich the class, the researchers took the role of learners-instructors to explore writing beyond its conventional practices in EFL classrooms. After 40 hours of instruction, it was shown that the students found a way to enrich their writings and to express their ideas through words and statements that resembled the way writers and directors of the movies dealt with pictures. Students were engaged in deciphering the pictures, inferring and expressing the meanings, and finding a framework for their writings based on the genres of the movies. Following these activities, learners learnt how to be visually literate and to move beyond the predetermined writing formats and discover their own through an artistic practice to give life to their texts, like movies.