For years, finding ways and materials to make the learning experiences for EFL students more inspiring and fruitful has been one of the most important tasks of English teaching. Recently, it has become very popular among EFL teachers to use movies (in DVD format) as core content in the course curriculum or supplementary materials to teach English. And many researchers have reported that authentic video is motivating and beneficial. However, few studies have been conducted to investigate the relationship between students’ movie preferences and effective learning. If films shown in a class don’t arouse students’ interest, the learning effect will be lessened. Therefore, in the present study, the effectiveness of using DVD films of the most popular movie genres was examined. The five research questions were: 1. Does instruction using DVD films motivate students to study in EFL classes? 2. Are movie preferences related to effective learning? 3. What are the most popular movie genres? 4. Do subtitles/captions, one of the unique characteristics of DVD films, enhance comprehension of the language used in the movie and thus motivate students to learn? 5. Are movie‐related classroom activities such as keyword preview useful? The current study lasted for two semesters from February 2009 to January 2010. The research group conducted a survey to collect data which were analyzed to evaluate participants’ opinions on using movies to teach in EFL classrooms. Since all the participants were Yuanpei University students, we hope that the results of the survey will provide English teachers with useful information to teach EFL classrooms.