Extensive Viewing Guide: Billy Elliot
This B2-level ESL resource is an extensive viewing guide based on the film ‘Billy Elliot’. It is designed to help learners develop key language skills—listening, viewing, speaking, reading, writing and visually representing—through guided discussion, roleplay, vocabulary building, and engaging classroom activities.
Check out the guide
A 26-page Extensive Viewing guide to the Oscar-nominated film Billy Elliot starring Julie Walters and Jamie Bell for English language students who want to learn English through watching films. The guide will help students improve their English vocabulary, listening comprehension, pronunciation and speaking.
The viewing guide includes:
• Viewing recommendations
• A film synopsis with a glossary
• Pre-viewing discussion questions
• A glossary of 100 key words, phrasal verbs and expressions with phonetic spelling used in the film, with 300 example sentences, to aid comprehension and vocabulary acquisition.
• Post-viewing discussion questions
• Post-viewing writing and videoing tasks
Watch the trailer.
Check out the guide
What Is Extensive Viewing?
Extensive viewing is an approach to language learning that involves regular viewing of L2 (second language) television or films, inside and outside the classroom, with the aim of improving vocabulary and overall language skills. Extensive viewing is a proven and effective method for language acquisition. It allows learners to immerse themselves in real-world English in a natural and enjoyable way. Extensive viewing encourages students to watch full-length films and absorb the language as it is genuinely spoken.
Through this method, learners are exposed to authentic vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, regional accents and rich cultural references. These are often difficult to teach through traditional classroom materials.
Why Use an Extensive Viewing Guide?
By watching a film from start to finish, learners can better understand not only the words but also the emotion and context behind them. They see how tone, gesture and facial expression combine with spoken language to convey meaning. This makes the language more memorable and meaningful.
An extensive viewing guide maximises these benefits. It offers a clear structure, with pre-viewing, while-viewing and post-viewing activities. These tasks help learners build expectations, set goals and reflect on what they’ve learned.
In addition, each guide includes:
- Viewing tips
- A summary of each film section with a glossary of key words and expressions
- Comprehension questions
- Critical thinking tasks
- Multimodal tasks
These features help students stay engaged while reinforcing language skills.
Who Is It For?
This extensive viewing guide is designed for Intermediate (B1) to Advanced (C1) learners. It is suitable for both classroom use and independent study. Learners can improve:
- Listening comprehension by hearing natural speech
- Pronunciation by noticing intonation and stress
- Vocabulary through real-world examples in context
- Speaking and writing with discussion and creative tasks
- Multimodal literacy through viewing tasks and follow-up work
Learn English Naturally
Whether used in the classroom or for independent study, this extensive viewing guide helps learners not just understand English—but experience it as it is really spoken in everyday life.
Remember that Individual Membership and Institutional Membership of Film English Club allow unlimited access to all 800+ Film English Club Video Lesson Plans, Extensive Viewing Guides and Film Study Worksheets.
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Thanks for being part of the Film English community, and happy teaching!
— The Film English Team
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Can I buy individual lesson plans without taking out a suscription?
Dear Wendy,
Yes, you can buy individual lesson plans and viewing guides. Just click on the “Check out the guide” or the “Check out the lesson plan” button and you’ll be taken to a page where you can buy the guide or lesson plan. Alternatively, you can go to the Film English Club page https://filmenglish.wpengine.com/club/ and select the viewing guides or lesson plans you wish to buy.
I hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Kieran
Would it be possible to do more film guides in future that are on Netflix? Hardly any of the ones you’ve released recently are on Netflix. I don’t know how to get hold of a Billy Elliott if its not on Netflix
Dear Abigail,
Yes, we’ll be having more viewing guides for films which are available on Netflix shortly. With regard finding films which are not available on Netflix, i would recommend using the JustWatch website https://www.justwatch.com/ You simply search for the film you want to watch and your country, and you find where the film is available in your country. For example, here is a link which shows you where Billy Elliot can be viewed in France https://www.justwatch.com/fr/film/billy-elliot
I hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Kieran
I have looked at your website with mich interest many times but have not been able to ascertsin at which GER level tue lesson plans are designed for. Perhaps this information is included in each film lesson plan. It would be very useful to know at which level each Filfilm m lesson is available at before purchase.
Yours hopefully
Dear Claire,
All of the short film Lesson Plans state the CEFR level. All of the feature-length film Viewing Guides are aimed at students with B1 level and above.
I hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Kieran