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Video: Making an English Class More Fun

Why Do We Use Videos in an English Classroom?

I vividly remember that my students were excited and enjoyed watching videos on YouTube for an introduction of a chapter in the coursebook.

The week 6’s seminar was about video in ELT. In the seminar, we discussed in a group the reason we, as the language teachers, use and used videos in the classroom. Our group came up with the reasons below.

Video is attractive

Students can have fun and enjoy watching videos in learning English. By effective sounds and visuals, they become interested in the language and other cultures.

Video can bring authentic situation to classroom

I believe that authentic English in videos can play a crucial role in EFL context. Particularly, in Japan, English class might be the only place where Japanese students can have exposure to English use as well as varieties of English. They can develop their awareness of varieties of English and recognise that their varieties of English is not ‘wrong English’, but one of varieties. As a result of this, they could have confidence in communication with people from other countries by using their varieties of English. Thus, using videos in the class is vital for exposing them to authentic English used in various contexts.

Video can help students who are better learning visually

There may be some students who prefer learning English by visual. In this case, video can help them and encourage them to learn effectively.

Video can encourage students to make their own videos

Not only can students learn English through videos, but also they can create their own videos. In the creating process, they need to negotiate and communicate with their partners in pair or groups. This could generate a lot of interactions in English.

Video can improve learning

This stems from the fact that people receive information by visual and audio senses, which can improve learning the language, in particular, memorization.

Video has non-verbal communication aspects

Students can see non-verbal communication aspects through videos. They can also see context much clearer and cultural differences in non-verbal communication.

Besides the discussion in the seminar, I have worked on a pre-seminar task with Sherifah. For the task, we created a video material using one website and two different apps on our mobile phone: Piktochart, Aurasma and video making app.

Piktochart is mentioned in my previous post, so please see the link here. First, we created a poster (please click the image to make it bigger) in Piktochart using FREE template. Next, we made the videos using photos and our recordings. At the end, we embedded our videos in the poster using Aurasma (please see here for the use of Aurasma app).

*To watch the video on Aurasma, please downlowad Aurasma app on your mobile device. In Aurasma, please find the account name: sherryq8 and follow the account so that you can watch the videos when you scan the two map images above.

I have uploaded our videos using Aurasma on YouTube, so please check them out.

Our topic is facts about each other’s hometown: Miyako Island and Kuwait. The aims of the task are to exchange these cultures, to develop students’ awareness of cultural differences between their own culture and the partner city’s and to foster their understandings of the differences. For the objectives, students will have conduced their research about their cultures and hometown, created a poster or infographic and done a presentation. By the end of the lesson, they could actually exchange their portfolios with students in the partner city. I personally believe that this could be very beneficial for encouraging students to communicate with students in other countries in English and fostering their autonomy in learning and intercultural awareness.

The project could be applied to other different ones. Furthermore, students could cultivate their digi literacy skills because the project requires them to access and use various tools and texts, to think information critically and understand the contents, and to create their own things. The figure (cited from Cindy (Leach) Plunkett’ blog) shows the importance of digital literacy, so please go to her link here for more details.

Apart from the task my partner and I chose, I am personally interested in Videotelling by Jamie Keddie. This is one of the ways of bringing videos into a classroom. He says:

“Video + storytelling = Videotelling. In this technique, the teacher is the deliverer of the material. The delivery process is a whole class communicative event. The secret to videotelling is to decide what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. This will force you to consider ways to encourage learners to interact (e.g. what questions are you going to ask?)”

These are the videos he is doing Videotelling.

I assume that Japanese secondary students enjoy Videotelling, but I wonder if it could be suitable for any level of students in one class. Since it is a large classroom, individual studetns’ level of English varies from low to high. However, I would be willing to try it in the future in the Japanese English classroom so that I could see if Videotelling makes Japanese students’ English learning more fun and suitable for the context.

Jamie’s blog and Videotelling information are here and here.

Manami

Bibliography

-Augmented Reality and ELT-. (2012, May 18). Retrieved from https://eltmaterials.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/augmented-reality-and-virtual-realia/

Goldstein, B., & Driver, P. (2014). Language learning with digital video. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Keddie, J. (2014). Bringing online video into the classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.