The use of Videos in the ELT classroom

Week six was all about videos and their use in the ELT classroom. Considering I feel I am more of a visual learner, I found what we did in class these two past weeks very interesting. I have been using videos in my classes ever since I finished my CELTA and have found that students usually enjoy lessons based on videos. What I also found important during this session and after doing the reading for the week was how we actually use videos in class and what we do or could do with them.

While reading Ben Goldstein’s article ‘A history of video in ELT’, I identified myself with a lot of what he says about video use in the ELT classroom. Firstly, the ‘before’, ‘while’ and ‘after’ video activities; as Goldstein mentions, the ‘before’ stage ‘activates schema’, the ‘while’ stage ‘focuses the learner on comprehension or language-based tasks’ and the ‘after’ stage’ is when students ‘respond affectively to the material, reflecting on it or discussing it in some way’ (2017). I can think of many times I’ve used videos like that in my classes and I do agree that the ‘after stage’ leaves space for a more ‘creative response’ from students (Goldstein, 2017). Another thing mentioned in his article was the use of documentaries and news in class as ‘authentic’ materials, which are sometimes tweaked to facilitate students’ needs, and then they become ‘semi-authentic’. This in particular rings a bell as a book I’ve been using in my upper-intermediate classes, which also includes BBC talks and footage taken from documentaries, is ‘Speak Out’. I really like how activities around the video are structured for the students to practise various skills; however, I think it’s the job of teacher to exploit videos accordingly, depending on their students’ needs.

Moving onto more current trends, Goldstein talks about using videos to encourage ‘a more critical response’ from students. I thought this argument was particularly interesting as I do believe in the idea of critical thinking and moving away from just doing language tasks based on videos. Language can also emerge and be taught by asking students to dig deeper and think of what they ‘ve watched in a more critical way. A useful idea mentioned in Goldstein’s article is that of using ‘YouTube’ videos to ‘evaluate online comments’ and ‘develop a more critical interpretation’ of what the students see (2017).

Finally, I really liked Goldstein’s argument about the exploitation of video materials in the future. He claims it ‘should become less mechanical and more creative’ and that it is expected that videos ‘will be put into the hands of learners, thus giving them responsibility for their own learning’ (Goldstein, 2017). This idea of student autonomy has been a major realisation for me during the course and the materials module. Whatever we do in our classes should be a lot more than just using materials to teach a class. Materials, should be a tool we use or something we create to lead our learners to autonomy and thinking  more critically. Lyricstraining.com, for example, is a tool where students get the chance to type the lyrics of a song while watching its video. I’ve been using ‘Lyricstraining’ in my classes and my experience has shown me that students do enjoy activities like this. However, if we want to talk about more creative and less mechanical tasks, a great idea would be to set gap-filling exercises as homework and ask students to ‘evaluate the video and discuss how they would remake it and why’ in class as an ‘after’ stage activity (Goldstein, 2017).

Some recent personal experiences of using videos in class involve a task-based lesson I planned for my third assessed observation. I created a video with a colleague  where we pretended to be a travel agent and a customer. We performed a model dialogue and I used this video with the sound off to activate schemata at first and later on for students to see what a model dialogue looked like and re-perform the task. My students’ feedback at the end of the class was that the use of video had helped them perform the task better, pick up language mentioned in our dialogue, which they then used to recreate their own dialogue. This whole lesson and our session on videos generated another teaching idea; students could choose a topic of their interest and create their own videos accompanied by a dialogue. As Motteram (2011) points out, ‘this can progress quite quickly into developing significant digital skills for the learners, as well as making use of language to carry out the activities’. Adding to this, I’d say that teachers can also develop their digital skills with the help and knowledge of their students. It’s quite common for students to be familiar with so many different technologies nowadays, and we can definitely learn a lot from them. In fact, being open, giving learners the space and time to show what they know might motivate them more and boost their confidence, which could eventually lead to them being more active contributors in class.

TED talks have also proved useful in my lessons and my students usually have creative discussions about the topics they watch. I can remember using videos taken from TED talks which then generated a debate, which also led to vocabulary lessons on expressing opinion, agreeing/disagreeing, negotiating and persuading. Additionally, after reading Goldstein’s article, the idea of students evaluating comments, answering them or adding their own could definitely move the whole class to a more creative spectrum where learners respond critically to what they ‘ve watched.

Last but not least, Virtual Reality and ‘Aurasma’ were mentioned in our sixth session. One of my classmates demonstrated a listening task he’d created and used in one of his classes. It was really fascinating to see how we, teachers, can exploit new technologies and make a task/activity more interesting and creative. As a matter of fact, technology has been advancing and will continue to do so in the future. I think it’s paramount to familiarise ourselves and our students with innovative ways of doing things in class, especially in a world where young generations grow up using technology from an early age.

I definitely took a lot from this session and the reading I did for this week. It was really helpful to have all these conversations with people who work at different schools as well. Every school provides different facilities, but even when advanced technology facilities are not provided, it’s important to share ideas about how we could teach our students just by using a smartphone and an application on our devices. ‘Aurasma’ or ‘HP Reveal’, as it’s now called, is one of them and I’ll definitely try and make use of it in my future classes.

References

Goldstein, B. (2017) A history of video in ELT. In: Donaghy, K. & Xerri, D. (eds). The Image in English Language Teaching. Floriana, Malta: ELT Council. pp. 23-32.

Motteram, G. (2011). Developing language-learning materials with technology. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 303-327.

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1 Comment

  1. This is the final post that you asked me to take a look at, and I am happy to say that it is the most effective of the three I looked at. In this post you show you have engaged with the reading, and that you are able to reflect on some of your own practice using the theories and ideas in that reading. Having said that, in this post you are certainly taking things in the right direction but, once again, I want to signal what you could do to improve the post. As with your other posts you only reference one thing in the bibliography at the end of the post. If that single reading can result in this many ideas then where would a second reading have taken this post? When you opened the paragraph with the phrase “Some recent personal experiences of using videos in class…” I was really looking forward to some interesting discussion. What you do say is interesting but, once again, it just seems like you could have said much more. I’d be happy to explain what I mean in the tutorial. – Paul

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