Why use video in the language classroom
Using video in the classroom is a very effective way of adding variety to our classes and keeping students on their toes, and provided we choose the segment and the activities carefully, it is bound to be a lot of fun. A couple of other reasons for using video in the classroom are:
Cross-cultural awareness: it would be ideal if we could hop on a plane with our students and take them to experience the language live in places like the United States, England and Australia. That not being possible, we can easily bring all those places to our classrooms via video. What the rules for social greetings in English-speaking countries are (Do we kiss? Do we shake hands? Nod? Bow? Dance?), what their eating habits are, what they wear, their different accents… can all easily be conveyed with a good choice of video.
Visibility of the speaker(s): quoting (the great!) Penny Ur, most real-life listening situations involve seeing the person/people we are listening to, something which is obviously lost with CD-based listening activities. When we can see the speaker(s), we can rely, as well as on language, on paralinguistic features like facial expressions, gestures and body language in general, environmental clues (where the speakers are and what is happening around them) etc., making comprehension easier and the whole experience more realistic.
We can divide all video materials available for classroom use into:
TESOL materials: video segments and corresponding activities which come with, or can be additionaly purchased for, most modern course books in the market. One of the obvious pros of such materials is that not only are all the segments graded for the level of the students, but also the activities are prepared and ready to use. One of the cons of these materials could be that, more often than not, the acting, the dialogues and the situations portrayed in them can be artificial and, therefore, uninteresting and demotivating.
Authentic materials: basically, whatever has not been devised for use with students of English would fall under this category. Movies, news programs, TV commercials, series, sitcoms, talk shows, YouTube videos and so on. Since these do not come with activities and have not been graded, I shall focus on them from here on in when I address types of video activities.
Types of video activities
(The terminology below has been borrowed from the third edition of The Practice of English Language Teaching, by Jeremy Harmer.)
Video as part of a lesson: these are activities which can be used, for example, simply as a lead-in to the lesson, to practice an item of grammar, to liven up a class after a particularly harsh activity (a Mr. Bean snippet, for example) etc. In other words, these activities speak with the course book, and are used together with it. Examples:
– Lead-in: Imagine you are going to start a unit from your course book whose topic is supernatural phenomena. You may choose to play the last scene of the movie Ghost (1990), in which Molly (Demi Moore) has a chance to see and talk to her deceased husband Sam (Patrick Swayze) one last time before he goes to heaven (or not!). Before you play this four-minute scene, you ask your students to simply think, while they watch, about whether they think this conversation would have been possible in real life. After watching the scene, students discuss the question in pairs and then report back to you, before you move on to doing the book activities.
– Grammar practice/speaking: you have just taught the Present Continuous to your students and want to give them a chance to practice it. In front of the TV screen (laptop, computer etc), make two lines of seats which will be back to back. One line will be facing the screen, whilst the other will be facing the wall opposite. As you play the scene (from any movie or TV series, preferably something with a lot of action)
the students facing the screen have to tell the others what is happening in the movie. After a couple of minutes, students change positions so that those who had been listening will now be the ones narrating. Finally, play the whole scene for everyone to see and check whether they had understood what their peers had narrated.
Whole-lesson video: think of these as complete listening activities, with a beginning, a middle and an end, which may or may not be related to your course book topics and activities. Consider the following lesson plan for an Upper Intermediate class using the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008):
– Pre-listening: have students discuss what would have been different in their holidays if they had won the lottery, spent Christmas in Paris, had to work on Christmas and/or New Year’s. Give students a model first (If I had spent Christmas in Paris, I would’ve frozen), and in the end have them report their ideas to the class. You can then pre-teach a few words you believe will pose problems for your students while carrying out the while-listening tasks.
– While-listening: First time students watch the movie snippet (01h52m46s to 01h55m53s) they do a True or False activity, with sentences such as A woman in Paris was going shopping, but came back to her apartment because she heard the phone ring, Daisy was run over by the taxi on her way out of the theater etc. The second time they watch it, they have to pay attention to the many coincidences which led to Daisy’s being run over, so that they can, after watching the passage again, write sentences with the third conditional about them.
– Post-listening: Students are given a worksheet with situations which did not happen, and have to speculate on the consequences these would have had had they actually taken place. E.g. Brazil didn’t qualify for the 2010 World Cup, Michael Jackson didn’t die last yearetc. After students have discussed the sentences, teacher has them report their ideas to the whole group and ties up loose ends.
As shown in the description above, this movie activity is a whole lesson, in this case aimed at practicing, or even presenting, the 3rdConditional. The framework is the same as that of a listening class (which is basically what a video activity is). We have a lead-in/pre-listening stage in which we contextualize what is to come and pre-teach relevant lexis, a while-listening stage where students work on their skimming and scanning abilities, and, finally, a post-listening stage where they can use the topic and/or target language (in this case, the 3rdConditional) in a more productive and personalized fashion.
To finish, a quick FAQ about video in the classroom
1) Should I leave the subtitles on or off when using video in the classroom?
It depends on your goal. For the Ghost activity described above, since it’s merely a lead-in, the subtitles could well be on. For an activity that focuses primarily on developing listening skills, however, I would suggest they be off.
2) What about basic levels? Can I use authentic video materials with them?
You can and you should! It is not the level of the passage that matters, but that of the tasks you devise.
3) The video activities accompanying the course book my school uses are really boring and artificial video segments. What should I do?
Don’t use them! Substitute them for interesting, tailor-made, authentic video activities.
DISAL has recently published a great book on the topic called Atividades de Vídeo para o Ensino de Inglês which I highly recommend, by Louise Emma Potter and Ligia Lederman. Both authors will be giving a talk on the subject of video in the classroom at DISAL on September 14, 2012
. Don’t miss it!
*This article is a shortened version (believe it or not!) of an article I published in New Routes a few years back.
Higor Cavalcante is a teacher and teacher educator based in São Paulo, Brazil. He has worked for various schools in Brazil as a teacher, teacher educator, pedagogical consultant and director or studies, and is primarily interested at the moment in teacher education (his included), exams preparation and the impact of reading in the learning of English. He is also a blogger, and you can read his posts on www.higorcavalcante.com, as well as find out how to have him for talks and courses in your school.
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I love using video activities and I also dare invite you all to read an article about how to improve writing abilities:
https://oupeltglobalblog.com/tag/technology/