Webwatcher: activities using video

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Russell Stannard views more videos.


The growth of video on the internet over the last two years has been amazing. What is interesting is that increasingly this includes subtitles and quizzes. Video is great in class because if you only have one computer, you can still do a teacher-fronted lesson and then get the students to do activities in groups. Here are ten ideas for activities.

  1. Get one student to watch a video (without the sound) while a partner faces away from it. The first student describes what is happening. The other listens and takes notes.
  2. Give out a list of six things to look for in a video (objects, things that happen, etc). The students have to call out ‘Stop!’ when they see one of these things on the screen. This works well with younger children and lower levels.
  3. Give a written or oral summary of the video with some mistakes. The students watch and find the differences between your summary and the actual video.
  4. Give out a list of six events in the video but put them in the wrong order. The students watch and put them in the correct sequence. (You could also get them to put a dialogue in order.)
  5. Give out a list of six things that are said in the video. The students watch and write the correct name next to each to show who said it.
  6. Watch the video without the sound and get the students to write a commentary or a dialogue to go with it. Play the video and get some of them to read out their commentaries or dialogues. Then play the video with the sound and see whose ideas were closest.
  7. Play the video in sections and get the students to predict what will happen next.
  8. Play the video without the sound and get the students to name as many objects in it as they can remember.
  9. Print out the transcript of a video, deleting some words. The students watch and fill in the gaps.
  10. Get the students to watch the video with no sound and to think of ten words related to it. Write their ideas on the board, then play the video with the sound and see how many of the words were actually used.

http://en.yappr.com  

This great site has lots of high-quality videos with transcripts, which appear on the screen. Some of the videos have also been translated into other languages. Among the video controls there is a ‘Clear’ button that allows you to listen to the sound spoken in a clear voice (it uses text-to-speech technology). This is especially useful with songs. If you sign in, you can also get a full printout of the script (which usefully breaks down the whole video into time segments, too). Once you are a member, you can also upload your own videos, transcribe videos into other languages, etc.  

www.go4english.com/eia/archive.php?cid=10011008  

This part of the British Council site has three pages of animated dialogues. A ‘Dialogue’ button enables you to turn the speech bubbles on and off. As the dialogues have been specially designed for teaching English, they are based around common language functions and topics, such as money, complaining, invitations, habits, etc. There are additional activities to do with each set of animations (the instructions are in Arabic but it is usually easy to work out what to do).  

www.lingual.net/lingualproductitems/details.php 

This popular site has videos on a whole range of genres, taken from film and TV. Choose a category and then a video from the list on the left-hand side. Be patient as the videos are not streamed (ie they only play once they have been completely downloaded). You can turn the subtitles on and off and you can play and pause the video. (Unfortunately, you can’t rewind it, which is a little annoying.) The nice thing about the site is that the videos are of high quality and many will be familiar to the students as they are taken from films they may have seen. Students can even write their own reviews by clicking on the ‘Give a comment’ button.  

www.eslvideo.com  

This site has lots of songs, with subtitles included, and some of them also have quizzes. To find all the content, just click on the ‘Quizzes’ button near the top. The videos are organised by level. Some also offer transcripts and notes. If you log in, you can upload your own videos and make your own quizzes, too.  

http://dotsub.com 

Here you will find a superb variety of videos from a whole range of genres, together with transcripts, some of which have been translated into other languages. The ‘Search’ button works well. If you log on, there are lots of additional features: being able to save your favourites, translate other videos, etc. The best way to look for the content is via the ‘Genre’ button. Check the videos beforehand as some are aimed at adults, though I haven’t found anything offensive. There are videos in other languages, too.  

http://langolab.com  

Click on ‘Video’ at the top and you will see a list of genres. The videos have subtitles but you can also see the whole transcript on the right-hand side if you click on the ‘Transcript’ button. Additional elements like ‘Flash Cards’ are planned, but so far what is available is fairly limited. However, this site has lots of potential and hopefully in the next few months it will grow. Again, if you become a member, you can load up your own content, create subtitles, etc.  

A set of screen capture videos where I take you through all the sites listed above, plus a few more, can be found at: http://trainingvideos.hscs.wmin.ac.uk/videoTitles/index.html


Russell Stannard is a principal lecturer at the University of Westminster, UK, where he teaches using technology on multimedia and TESOL courses. He also runs www.teachertrainingvideos.com, a website that trains English teachers to use technology, which has won a Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Initiatives in Information and Communications Technology (ICT).


This article first appeared in English Teaching Professional, Issue 61, 2009


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