Russell Stannard suggests more interesting video clips and ways to use them.
In recent articles I have pointed out the ways in which video material on sites like MySpace.com and YouTube can be used in the classroom. The trouble with these sites is that though there is a lot of material, it is not always suitable for use in the class and searching for appropriate video clips can take a long time. Michael Carter, a teacher trainer at International House in Seville, recently recommended a site to me called VideoJug.
VideoJug tends to deal with more serious topics, and not all the content is homemade. The site has hundreds of professionally produced videos with good sound quality on topics such as cooking and recipes, history, health, sport, work and careers: many of the topics you will see in the contents page of your average ELT coursebook. Many are How to … videos, such as How to serve in tennis, How to lose weight or How to cook southern fried chicken. There are some quite funny and useful videos on the site. For example, I found How to insult someone using British sign language! Other interesting ones to try might be How to be the perfect girlfriend or How to be the perfect boyfriend. The most useful one I found was How can I tell if she is attracted to me?, which was made by a body language expert. Some of the funniest videos are in the ‘Relationship and family’ section. What I like about them is that you can make good use of both the sound and the visuals. Here are two ideas which I have recently tried out. I learnt a few lessons on the way, so I would advise you to spend time choosing a suitable video, listen to the commentary, make notes and be prepared to give the students some vocabulary in advance so that they don’t feel too daunted!
1. Turn off the sound and get the students to make the commentary
If you have a high-level class, you can get them to watch a video without the sound and then work together to write the commentary themselves. If you have a projector, you can then get one member of the class to read out the commentary while the rest watch the video. In a recent class we did this with the following video: www.videojug.com/film/how-to-exerciseyour- biceps-using-weights. I must admit this was a bad choice as the video was pretty boring, but we had been doing a lot of work on ordering and organising instructions, so it seemed quite relevant. We watched it once, with the sound off, and brainstormed words related to the video, which we put on the board. We then watched it a second time, again with the sound off, and made a basic list of the things we saw, ie a man doing exercise, equipment, Exercise 1, Exercise 2, Exercise 3 and a review of all three exercises. The students then worked in pairs to work on a commentary. I played the whole video two or three more times as they were doing this to remind them of the content, and I went round monitoring and assisting. I encouraged the students not to write out the complete commentary, but instead to make notes of the points they wished to make. Finally, I got one student from each group to deliver their commentary while I played the video. This activity was much more difficult than I had anticipated, and when we finally played the video with the sound, there were enormous differences between the real commentary and the students’ efforts. The students’ commentaries were much shorter and more basic. I decided to focus on the words and phrases in the real commentary which the students hadn’t used (things like repetition, start position, elbow joint, dumbbells, etc). It was only then that I realised that you can actually print out the complete commentary for the students to read! This is really useful and if I did the exercise again, I would print this out in preparation. This activity worked well and it took very little time to prepare, but next time I will find a more interesting topic.
2. Watch a video and try to rebuild the text
You only need one computer and a projector for this activity. It is a sort of ‘dictogloss’, where the students work in groups and try to rebuild the commentary that they heard. I chose the topic How to talk knowledgeably about the Ashes (www.videojug.com/film/ how-to-talk-knowledgeably-about-the-ashes), thinking this would be interesting as students would learn a bit about British culture at the same time. I started by giving some background information about cricket (not much as I don’t know much about it myself) and explained that the Ashes is a series of games between Australia and England. The students watched the video about three times and took notes. They then worked in two groups of five and swapped information about what they had understood. I told the students to try to re-write the text as a series of facts. For example:
In 1882 the English lost to Australia at cricket. The newspapers thought this was very bad. One paper said it was the ‘death of cricket’.
Each group managed to get about four or five facts together (much fewer than I had anticipated). I then put the students in pairs so that each pair had one student from each group and told them to exchange ideas. One pair then read out their combined facts. After this, I gave out a copy of the actual commentary and we played the video again. The students found the commentary quite hard to follow. However, they liked the topic and found it quite interesting to know about the Ashes.
Why not take a look at the site? It will give you access to a lot of very useable material, which is all free, nearly all of good quality and easy to search through. It can also provide you with a useful activity for homework: get the students to watch a certain video and answer questions on it.
Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer in ICT and Multimedia at the University of Westminster, UK. He is currently working on the Teacher’s Books for Hello English, published by Balberry.
This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 51, 2007