7/21/2019 Ideas for Exploiting Video in the Classroom

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Cambridge English Teacher Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014

Ideas for exploiting video in the Classroom

Aims:

Reassess how video can be exploited in the classroom by embracing visual stimuli.

Materials required:

Any piece of video material you have used recently in class.

Appropriate for:

trainees, new or experienced teachers providing they have had some previous experience of

using video in class

Applicable to learners:

at any level

The most traditional way of exploiting video in class is to focus on language. It is commonplace forlearners to watch a sequence and then answer comprehension questions based on it. This couldbe laid out as a simple gap-fill task in which learners select a lexical item they have heard, or thefocus could be on skills practice: the learners might be asked to extract the gist of a conversationthat they have seen. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach but it does treat thevideo format as audio, which means that learners are looking at the screen and at their books atthe same time*.

An alternative approach is to go beyond comprehension and focus on the visual stimuli. Forexample, show the video sequence without sound and ask the class true/false questions based onpurely visual information or ask learners to tick the elements that they have seen. Video sequenceswhich have no dialogue can be chosen, as certain scenes lend themselves well to this approach.For example, chase sequences in action movies or the openings of films; the latter often establishthe setting, atmosphere and characters without the need for any dialogue. Likewise, any sequence

in which body language is highlighted should work well.

*Note: There is nothing wrong per se with comprehension tasks based around video sequences.However, the emphasis should not be on testing comprehension but building it collaboratively. Forexample, a classic task is to get learners to reconstruct the meaning of any given piece of material.Some learners will understand some information and others will grasp other parts. Working as agroup, the class can come to a global understanding of the video in question.

7/21/2019 Ideas for Exploiting Video in the Classroom

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Cambridge English Teacher Cambridge University Press and Cambridge English Language Assessment 2014

The Task

1. Find a piece of video material that you have used for comprehension type activities. Play thevideo without any sound. Note down any visual elements that attract your attention. What standsout visually from the sequence?

2. Bearing in mind these visual elements, design a short task around them. If there are manydifferent elements, you could design a visual memory test or get learners to sequence a series of

images in the order in which they appear in the clip. You can also raise the challenge by includingdetractors (elements which dont appear in the video) or asking learners to correct false informationbased on visual stimuli.

3. Try it out with your students. What is their reaction to watching video in this way? Learnerexpectations and classroom experience may mean that students are first rather puzzled by such anapproach.

4. In future lessons, try experimenting with both comprehension based tasks and tasks based onvisual stimuli. Which ones do your learners prefer? In which order do the different activity typeswork best?

5. Finally, experiment with more open-ended questions which do not have single, straightforwardanswers. For example, try freeze-framing a video sequence and asking questions about aparticular visual element such as what a particular piece of body language means. Encouragedifferent responses. This should generate more language in class and encourage all learners tocontribute.

Bibliography

Goldstein, B. & Driver, P. (2014) Language Learning with Digital Video, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.