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Using Video in The English Language Classroom

This document discusses using video in the English language classroom. It provides reasons for using video such as adding variety, helping with cross-cultural awareness by exposing students to English-speaking cultures, and making listening more realistic by allowing students to see speakers. There are two main types of video materials: TESOL materials designed for language learning and authentic materials not specifically made for language learning, such as movies and TV shows. Video activities can be used as part of a lesson, such as a lead-in or to practice grammar, or can form the basis of a whole lesson centered around a video. Examples of both types of activities are given.

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Higor Cavalcante
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74 views3 pages

Using Video in The English Language Classroom

This document discusses using video in the English language classroom. It provides reasons for using video such as adding variety, helping with cross-cultural awareness by exposing students to English-speaking cultures, and making listening more realistic by allowing students to see speakers. There are two main types of video materials: TESOL materials designed for language learning and authentic materials not specifically made for language learning, such as movies and TV shows. Video activities can be used as part of a lesson, such as a lead-in or to practice grammar, or can form the basis of a whole lesson centered around a video. Examples of both types of activities are given.

Uploaded by

Higor Cavalcante
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Using Video in the English Language Classroom

By Higor Cavalcante

Introduction

It has always been a challenge for me, and in my experience as a teacher trainer for
most – if not all – teachers, to add the elusive variety to my classes. Penny Ur says there’s a
great difference between a teacher with twenty years’ experience and one with one year’s
experience repeated twenty times (probably my favorite TESOL quote ever), while Jeremy
Harmer conversely says that the constant repetition of classroom routines can dent even the
most ardent initial enthusiasm. Whereas both of them are talking about teachers, I have
always thought of those maxims regarding students as well. How many of our students have
been trying to study English with different ‘methods’, schools, teachers and the like for years
on end, never quite reaching their ultimate goal of communicating effectively in the universal
language? Well, many. And while I understand there is a gallimaufry of reasons why students
drop out of their English programs time and again (financial reasons, for instance), it seems to
me that the boredom, repetitiveness and predictability of our classes, which invariably set in
after some time, are certainly motives to factor in. Wouldn’t there be a difference as well
between a student with five years’ English-learning experience and one with a one year’s
experience repeated five times?

There are many different ways of at least trying to prevent this increasing predictability
from eventually causing students to interrupt their studies, among which I would include
carrying out an effective needs analysis at the start of the program, using games and game-like
activities, having out-of-the-classroom lessons from time to time, using music in the lessons
and so on. What this article focuses on, however, is a tool which, albeit not new, is severely
underused, and often-times poorly used in classrooms around the country. I will, then, in the
next few paragraphs, have a look at reasons for using video in the classroom, types of video
materials, types of video activities, some difficulties the use of video may pose and, eventually,
a couple of examples of complete video activities to use in the classroom, the overall objective
being to help teachers to, based on the needs and interests of their students, prepare their
own video activities.

Why use video in the language classroom

As I suggested above, using video in the language classroom is one of many ways of
adding variety to our classes and keeping students on their toes. Also, provided we choose the
video and the activities carefully, it is bound to be much more fun than, say, a gap-filling CD-
based listening exercise. 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, Australia, New Zealand etc. 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 Penny Ur again, 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 – essential for communication – 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.

Types of video materials

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. If that is the case of an activity
you are thinking of using with your students, I would suggest against it.

Authentic materials: basically, whatever has not been devised for students of English
to learn from 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 second 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.
Before you play this four-minute scene, you ask your students to simply think,
while they watch, about whether they think this conversation is 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,
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 plan of lesson using the movie The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button (2008):

- Pre-listening:

- While-listening:

- Post-listening:

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