authentic materials videos

The approach in this book

How can we exploit these multiple possibilities for using video?

The “Friday afternoon” approach is to use an entire video program straight through as a one-off lesson, with little preparation or follow-up. This has the advantage of extensive exposure and perhaps of novelty. But it is the equivalent of giving students only whole books to read, allowing only a short time to read them and then snatching them away

The other extreme is to work the text to death with worksheets on vocabulary, content and structure. This is admirably thorough but doesn’t suit most students, since many worksheets may ruin enjoyment.

A third approach to using authentic video (and the one recommended here), is generic, generative and gentle:

1)   The activities are generic in that they emerge naturally from the particular kind of video program, sequence or shot, and exploit its particular qualities

2)   They are generative in that they can be used again and again with other similar programs, sequences or shots

3)   They are gentle on the students because what they ask for tends to come naturally. The activities are also gentle on the teacher in that they require little or no preparation, and become progressively easier as they reinforce professional skills. They will help you to build up a repertoire of activities that you can pull out, ready for use, whenever you find a piece of useful video, so that you come as relaxed, inventive and capable with video as you are with written texts.

P9 General Guidelines for video activities:

1)   Setting up: equipment and technologies

2)   Breaks: viewing should not be frequently interrupted. Do comprehension activities before and after viewing rather than breaking up the sequence for explanations or questions.

3)   Explaining: find the right balance between explaining too little and explaining too much. Too little help beforehand will leave learners perplexed and frustrated; too much will rob them of the surprise and pleasure that video should bring

4)   Sound: persuade students to sit back and close their eyes, it  also makes them listen really hard and is good for imaginative activities

5)   Choice: as far as possible, give studens choices, e.g. they can choose which sequences to study from longer program, how often to view in order to understand, what roles to take in group activities, what favorite scenes to present to the class; what vocabulary to note down. Personal choice is not only motivating, it is part of learning; it encourages independence and focuses on real needs.

6)   Recycling language focus activities which encourage independent learning strategies should be repeated frequently: learners need to build up the habit of noticing the details of language use in real contexts

7)   Modeling: giving a “worked example” for students to refer to when working on their own. Modeling gives the rules of the game, it allows free observation, choice of what to imitate and liberty about content. It is particularly important for students working independently; it also has great value for teachers as it reveals not only the language demands of the task, but also students problems and misunderstandings about what they have to do.

8)   Narrative tenses: make a distinction between telling the story from the outside and telling it from the inside

P12

It is a window into culture. Now so well researched that they are as good as a visit to a museum (place and period). But more important are the minutiae of daily life.

But this set of formulas and clichés is also part of our general culture, copied and parodied by the media world, and can be explored with pleasure and profit in class

Video drama reflects major cultural movements, but it also creates culture. Much of the popular knowledge shared by the English-speaking world comes from feature films on general release: many people would never have known about.. and this culture is now global. Thus, understand video drama is an entry ticket to the English-speaking world, on a papr with reading newspapers and magazines, writing business letters, having conversations and other major language activities found in EFL course books.

On the linguistic front:

1)   First, understanding is that much easier because the language is interpreted in full visual context. Events, setting, actions, expressions, gestures in a scene give a dense immediate context which highlights meaning, both literal and pragmatic.

2)   More over, the language is directly linked to the feelings, situations and speakers, which inspire it, and this full social context gives access to the full meaning.

3)   As we watch, we also gradually accumulate an understanding of the whole story, the narrative context; this opens up the significance of the words in the action as a whole.