An Exploratory Study on First Year University Students’ English Language Learning Experiences through a Netflix Animated Film: Over the Moon

Abstract

English movies have emerged as invaluable resources and language learning tool for language educators seeking to enhance the language proficiency of learners. (Brown, 2001; Ho & Le, 2025; Pervan, 2024; Rao, 2019;) However, there is a research gap to explore on how to integrate movies into language instruction to offer an insight into effective strategies, and how to address potential benefits and limitations of incorporating tasks on movies into classroom. This research study aims to probe language learning experiences a group of 21 first year university students gained through completing language tasks such as vocabulary, and content comprehension through watching a Netflix musical fantasy animation, Over the Moon. The study also engaged a group of three volunteer participants to reflect their own learning experiences in a mini focus group interview. The findings showed that the learners could acquire the right meanings of words. Before watching the film, the average score = 8.43 out of 20 words, and after watching, the average scores increased to 17.71. Most students performed strongly on the while- and post-watching tasks, with mean scores of 9/9 (100%) for character identification, 14/15 (93.3%) for quote recognition, and 8.9/10 (89%) for event sequencing. Additionally, the results from the questionnaire presented the overall picture that this group of participants had moderate to very high positive perceptions toward learning English through movies, with mean scores ranging from 3.24 to 4.29. The qualitative data analysis from the mini focus group interview was in line with the quantitative data analysis, and also gave an insight on what the participants actually learned through the movie and learning tasks, and shed light on how to integrate the movie to promote their learning experiences.