It is important for children to study films at school to learn literature. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Some people believe that it is essential for students to undertake a study of films in order to analyse various written works. If questioned, I favour this idea to a major extent. My stance is elaborated further. There are a myriad of positives of viewing films to get a better insight into literature. The most vital one is that the audio-visual form of movies creates a clear word-picture and has a long lasting impact on the learner’s mind. The viewers get a perfect understanding of all the happenings as they are even able to observe the minor details. Furthermore, the learning process picks up pace. Reading a novel and coming up with a critical response may take weeks; however, students get a gist of it by watching a two hour film. On top of that, films are more entertaining. This activity is quite refreshing as it gives students a much needed break from their monotonous bookish learning. However, I would also like to pin-point a few demerits that may come along. To begin with, films may not always paint the correct picture of a novel. The movies may leave out some big events portrayed in the books due to time constraints or other reasons. Also, learners are not able to focus on the aspect of language and writing style as their concentration is more on visuals and the story. All in all, it is crucial that films be shown to learners while teaching books as the audio-visual format will really clear all their doubts. It is rightly said that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and as a movie has thousand of moving pictures, it is equivalent to millions of words.