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Teacher: You aren’t paying attention to me. Are you having trouble hearing? Pupil: No, teacher I’m having trouble listening!
Using original video and sound effects
to teach
English
• Freeze framing (freezing the picture and asking the students what they think will happen next)
• Partial viewing (covering most of the screen with a piece of paper)
• Picture or speech (half the class watches the video while the other half faces away).
• Subtitled films (students see and hear the English language)
Teaching the video lesson:
I played the first scene and asked them to guess what the sound was.
Then I continued, pausing at the end of each scene for about 15 seconds
to allow them to make notes. I repeated this same process until they
had listened to the whole video. Then I played the video again while
they checked their notes.
Next, students formed pairs and took three
minutes to discuss their notes with their partner. Students enjoyed
discussing their very different ideas about the origin of the sounds
they had heard.By asking questions, I encouraged them to use the
appropriate grammatical structures.
For instance, when I played the
part where I was blow drying my hair, I asked, “What could it be? Could
it be a vacuum cleaner?” One student said, “Yes, it might be a vacuum
cleaner,” whereas another one said, “No, it can’t be a vacuum cleaner.”
When they were not able to use the structure, I prompted them to use the modal construction by asking tag questions, such as “It can’t be a vacuum cleaner, can it?” In order to respond to my question, students had to use the teaching point.
I elicited their answers—for example, “It
might be a vacuum cleaner” or “It can’t be a washing machine”—and wrote
them on the board. Then I underlined the “modal + verb to be” with
another color to help them notice the new structure.
I continued the process about the origin of all the sounds in the
video,
and I produced a list of their speculations on the board where the new
structure and the modals were underlined and highlighted.
Then I removed the newspaper from the TV screen and let them watch the entire video. This was the most interesting part of the lesson because the students had a lot of fun, laughing at some of their speculations.
Teaching grammar:
The
same video can be used to teach different
grammar points, such as
present and past simple,
present and past progressive, future simple,
and
“going to + infinitive” without to, all by using the
technique of
freeze framing. In order to teach
grammar, you need to play the video, freeze
framing the picture after each scene,
and then ask questions.
For
instance, freeze frame the picture and ask your
students questions like, “What is s/he doing?”
“What did s/he do?” “What was s/he doing?”
“What is s/he going to do next?” or “What will
happen next?” In this way students will be
prompted to use the teaching point.
Once you elicit
their answers, write them on the
board and highlight the structure
(e.g., “to be + ing”
form of the verb for present progressive, or “will +
infinitive” without to for future simple). Since the
video consists of a sequence of action, adverbs
like first, second, finally, before, and
later can
also be introduced to and practiced with students.
