TEACHING ROMANIAN FOR FOREIGNERS THROUGH ONLINE FILMS.

The internet is an extraordinary source for language teaching. Set as valuable input to teaching language and culture, online films can be extensively used by language teachers to develop students' language and socio-cultural skills. The careful choice of films is made according to pedagogical objectives such as: the development of colloquial language skills, the acquisition of sociocultural knowledge, the practice of summary skills etc. The teaching of language and culture through films or film fragments is an entertaining and motivational activity. In this manner, learning occurs and teaching is effective. Teaching Romanian for foreign students has captured people's attention in the last 10 years and its importance is increasing. More and more foreigners arrive in Romanian for various reasons, such as to further study in the Romanian language; to find a job in Romania, to obtain a degree in an European country and continue their studies abroad in Europe; to pursue a career in our country or abroad or to attend specialization programmes to work in Romania. The present article introduces the importance of teaching Romanian for foreigners and covers, in its theoretical background, advantages and drawbacks of using films in the language classroom. Research in this domain covers the majority of these topics and offers examples of pre-viewing, while-viewing and postviewing classroom activities but it doesn't offer concrete examples of online film-based lesson scenarios for teaching foreign languages, and in particular, Romanian for foreigners. That is why our article, presents a lesson scenario based on a short online Romanian film available on the website: www.cinepub.ro. This website offers plenty of films and we found it very useful to use it both as lecture inputs and homework. The article concludes that with appropriate tasks designed to achieve the teaching objectives and to be appropriate for the students' language level, films are a valuable resource which both teach and entertain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]