In Language learning with digital video, Ben Goldstein and Paul Driver provide a number of ways video can be used in the classroom. There are many reasons for using video in the classroom, which are similar to the reasons for using images mentioned in a previous post. For example, video has the potential to motivate and engage students, to encourage intercultural awareness and visual literacy skills, and to help learners remember language.
They categorise four key roles for video in the classroom: for language focus, skills practice, as a stimulus, and a resource.
Language Focus
Video has traditionally been used in ELT for language focus and skills practice and it is probably still the most common way teachers exploit the medium. The first time I ever used video in the classroom was to practice the present progressive. I divided the class into pairs and had one student in each pair sit with their back to the screen, while the other student watched a Pink Panther cartoon and described the action to their partner.
One of the lessons included in Language learning with digital video looks at verb-noun collocations. First, students brainstorm actions that could be performed on a bike. Then, students are shown the following clip and make a note of all the actions to compare with their original list. In the clip, the cyclist does some pretty weird and wonderful thing on his bike such as have a wash, shave, iron his clothes, and fry an egg.
Skills practice
I think using an audio-visual to practice listening skills such as listening for gist or specific information is preferable to listening to a recording, as the listener can benefit from the non-linguistic clues to meaning which are normally available to us. Lessons that use video in this way are often organised by a pre-listening, while listening, and post-listening stage. Pre-viewing tasks typically include brainstorming activities and prediction tasks, where students can focus on their own experience and prior knowledge, thereby activating schema. Classic while you watch tasks include gap-fills, ticking items on a list, sequencing items on a list, taking notes, and answering multiple-choice questions. Post-viewing tasks often involve summarising and retelling the narrative or personalising the content in some way. Examples of ideas for writing practice contained in the book include a video dictogloss, adding thought bubbles to clips using video editors such as Windows Movie maker and Apple iMovie, and adding subtitles to thirty seconds long Bollywood clips at grapheine.com
Resource
Using video as a resource refers to activities where the information contained in a video can be used in subsequent tasks. For example, in the case of the flipped classroom, students could watch a video at home ready to discuss or debate in class. Useful websites for this include Ted talks, Big think, and the RSA animated lectures. One of the lessons they suggest involves comparing two ‘how-to’ videos, (which you can find on YouTube and Howcast.com), while another involves asking students to reflect on their own culture before listing the cultural characteristics of either Spain or China. Afterwards, students are shown Sweet Spain or Beautiful Beijing and compare the characteristics shown in the video with their own predictions and discuss cultural stereotypes.
Stimulus
Using video as a stimulus can incorporate a number of alternative while-viewing tasks that focus on different aspects of the video rather than the audio such as the images, cinematic elements, cultural aspects, text, character types, sound, genre, and narrative. By not focusing on the audio, it is possible to use a clip for different levels by grading the task.
There are many examples of using video as a stimulus in Language learning with digital video, but I ended up using an idea by Kieran Donaghy in a peer observed lesson. Kieran Donaghy’s Delta publishing book about using video in the classroom is called Film in action. He also has a blog containing lots of different lesson plans. I found his lessons very easy to implement and better suited to my context. At the moment, I am borrowing classes to complete lesson assessments and observations and his lesson seemed easier to use with an unknown class. I used the clip below for a vocabulary lesson about household chores. The clip contains very little dialogue and is about a boy who helps his mother save time so that she can go and see his school play. First, I asked students to brainstorm household chores and then collocate them to the verbs do, make or take. Students then watched the clip and made a note of all the household chores. Finally, I asked students to work together in groups and role play being the mother and send me (the father) a short text explaining what had happened. I produced a worksheet to accompany it, following the tutorials of Jason Renshaw that appear on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83×2–jZ8Nc
The second part of Language learning with digital video looked at video creation. Most of these lessons involved projects taking place over a few sessions, so I was unable to try them out. However, I have definitely been inspired and look forward to bringing out the green screen at some point in the future.
In Bringing Online Video into the Classroom, Keddie (2014) also suggests various projects involving students creating their own videos in class. He also recommends making your own videos, to bring to class. These can contain monologues, dialogues, and interviews:
Monologues:
You could ask two individuals to tell the same story, film then separately, and then get students to compare the two videos in class.
You could ask a friend to provide an alternative version of a coursebook listening or ask them to model a speaking activity.
Dialogues:
Film two people discussing a ‘would you rather’ question and ask students to guess the relationship between the two speakers.
Give two people a thought provoking picture to discuss that would lead to the speakers using the language of speculation.
Interviews:
Interview a friend with an interesting job or hobby using questions provided by your students. You could use screen capture software to record the interview on Skype.
Film a ‘vox pox’ (a man on the street video) in the staffroom. Choose a language point from a coursebook and ask everyone in the staffroom the same question such as ‘what are you doing as the weekend?’
Finally, Keddie suggests a number of ways of deconstructing a video that involve either playing the audio and concealing the visual or showing the video and muting the audio. Ideas involving playing the audio only include asking students to hypothesise about the action, giving students a list of adjectives and asking students to identify the emotions they can hear, and asking students to speculate about the non-verbal sounds. Ideas that involve isolating the visual include pausing the clip at various points to elicit language and ideas and asking students to write a dialogue of a scene, which they can then compare to the original.
In conclusion, there are many different ways of using video in the classroom other than using a video for listening skills practice.
Bibliography:
Goldstein, B. & Driver, P. (2014) Language Learning with Digital Video. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Donaghy, K. (2015) Film in Action. Peaslake: Delta Publishing.
Jamie Keddie (2014) Bringing Online Video into the classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.