Vicki

Teacher of professional and technical English, writer and teacher trainer.

Spontaneous speech and videos

 Indie publishing, Video and tech  2 Responses »
Oct 222014
 

If you’ve ever tried recording real conversations and interviews to use as class materials, you’ll know how difficult it is. Just a few of the problems include:

  • In normal conversation, speakers will refer to things they share knowledge of, that students won’t understand (or need to know)
  • Spontaneous speech is often REALLY boring. What’s interesting for the people in the room can be very long winded and dull for outsiders
  • Technical issues – capturing good quality audio is hard, and if you want video as well it gets even harder.

So you’d think creating a site with large numbers of videos of natural and engaging conversation would be an impossible undertaking. But it’s not. In fact there’s a site that’s been doing it successfully for years: Real English®.  It’s a great resource for English learners – the language is graded and well organized and it has interactive exercises and a mobile section too.

RealEnglishMike Marzio is the founder and he’s been a pioneer in the art of the spontaneous ELT interview with the man (and woman) in the street. The camera just seems to love some of his interviewees, but I also think Mike has a very strong editting eye.

I don’t know how much footage Mike cuts from the raw interviews that he and his team collect, but I’d wager that it’s stacks more than the materials he actually uses. That’s a great strength because when you put a discerning EFL professional in charge of video editing decisions, it means you can overcome  the obstacles I listed above.

I think the website is a remarkable achievement and a real inspiration for other video makers (like me!). Thanks Mike, and may Real English® keep forging a path forward, growing and rocking for many years to come.

 Posted by at 6:37 pm

For and during…

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  2 Responses »
Oct 222014
 

There’s some stuff that comes up all the time in class. For example, how many times have you found yourself having to teach the key rules we follow when we use ‘make and do’? I bet it’s a lot. And then there’s other stuff that comes up less frequently. And when you try to pull a good explanation from your memory, you think, ‘Dammit, what are all those examples that illustrate it clearly?’.

‘During’ is one that’s sometimes caught me out. It really helps if you can give lots of examples of nouns/noun phrases that we use with ‘during’, but can you think of them off the top of your head? And will your students be able to remember them if you do?

This is a short video, only a little over 2 minutes. But we’ve packed it full of what we think are good collocations with ‘during’ and ‘for’ and we’ve tried to make them fun and memorable.

As always, it’s available over at ‘Simple English Videos Dot Com’ with a clickable transcript. Enjoy!

 Posted by at 3:43 am

If and In case

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  2 Responses »
Oct 092014
 

if&incase300x250The next time you’re working on conditionals, why not teach ‘in case’? Maybe it’s my cautious streak, but it seems like such a handy little phrase to know to me.

There are a couple of things about ‘in case’ that students may find tricky. First they need to know how its meaning differs from ‘if’.  And then there’s the issue that we don’t follow it with ‘will’ or ‘would’. But that seems like another good reason to teach it, to me. We rarely use ‘will’ in the ‘if-clause’ in conditionals either, so it gives us another opportunity to practise that.

Hopefully this video will help students get a good handle on ‘in case’. As always, it’s available at the www.simpleenglishvideos.com website with a clickable transcript. Enjoy!

Quick update!

Just in case it comes in handy – here are some questions you can ask…

Tick all the correct endings in the sentences below.

  1. Take an umbrella in case …
  • it should rain.
  • it will rain.
  • it would rain.
  • it starts raining.
  1. Take your phone, just in case …
  • she will call.
  • she needs to call you.
  • she calls.
  • she would call.
  1. I wrote the number down in case …
  • we would forget it.
  • we would forgot it.
  • we forgot it.
  • we should forgot it.
  1. Bring your driving licence, just in case …
  • you need some ID.
  • you should need some ID.
  • someone asks to see your ID.
  • someone would ask to see your ID.
  1. I reserved the room till 5pm in case …
  • the meeting went on longer than expected.
  • the meeting goes on longer than expected.
  • the meeting would go on longer than expected
  • the meeting will go on longer than expected.
 Posted by at 6:11 pm

Carter’s breakfast

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Oct 072014
 

Lots of teachers use the context of daily routines to practise the simple present tense, so we thought it might be useful to show you Carter’s daily routine. The teaching idea is pretty simple. Students have to:

  • watch the video
  • say what Carter’s morning routine is
  • describe their own morning routine

The video is available with a clickable transcript at https://www.simpleenglishvideos.com . Feel free to copy and use the transcript to create worksheets and exercises, and if you have any good teaching ideas for the video, please add them there. They might help other teachers. The video is also available on YouTube at http://youtu.be/tPDSjoCFd9k.

OK, over to Carter… CLICK THE PICTURE…

CartersBreakfast

 

 

 Posted by at 6:30 am

Website chants and raps

 Video and tech  No Responses »
Aug 212014
 

Our Simple English Videos website is back up with a new look. NewWebsite The movie trailers have gone. Ah, we loved them too, but this way we can focus our efforts on MAKING NEW VIDEO LESSONS. Jay’s got some new lights and I’ve got a big pile of script ideas. So subscribe to the site’s email list and we’ll drop you a line when we publish new ones. We hope you’ll find the new site easier to navigate too.

Onwards and upwards It’s been great seeing the site grow over the last two years (yes, it’s just 2 years old). We’ve learnt a lot, and that’s why we’ve reorganised the site. But our core mission hasn’t changed. Our goal remains to support both learners and teachers of English with high quality, pedagogically sound and engaging videos. If you ever have a moment, please tell us how you think we’re doing. Feeback (good and bad) helps us make better videos.

New videos The cool thing about the tidy up was I came across things I’d forgotten about. One was a rap/chant video that we shot at several years ago. I’d posted it on YouTube but hadn’t posted it at Simple English Videos. It”s there now. And I also unearthed some footage I’d completely forgotten about which I’ve now made into a new video for beginners. Enjoy!

 Posted by at 9:31 pm

Busy, busy…

 Video and tech  No Responses »
Aug 142014
 

SEVCollage600We’re changing direction at Simple English Videos. Since the start of this year we’ve been delightfully overloaded with video work from a variety of different clients. It’s been a very happy problem and we’re thrilled by how much interest and work our videos have generated. But it’s also forced us to take a breath and forge a new direction.
Original content
In future, the Simple English Videos website will no longer offer movie trailers. Instead we will focus on original content – videos we make ourselves.
Why? Well, we adore movie trailers and we think they are a terrific resource for natural language. But we also know that there are other great websites out there offering movie trailers. Making original English language teaching videos, where language is presented in context, requires a different set of skills. It’s become clear that that’s where we should be focussing our efforts.
Our goal
It hasn’t changed. We still aim to provide both teachers and students with a source of pedagogically sound and engaging ELT videos with clickable transcripts – free videos presenting language in context. But a new element is we’d like to produce new videos more regularly, and offer teachers more affordable support materials in our store. We know making a new video every week would be ambitious, but you never know what you can accomplish when you aim high, eh?
Two weeks website downtime
I’ve just taken the website offline so we can revamp it and create a new environment better suited to presenting original content. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope that timing the downtime for the summer vacations will cause the least disruption. We expect to be off line for two weeks and in the meantime all our original videos will continue to be accessible on our YouTube channel Teachers needing teaching materials can continue to find them at our store.
How you can help
Please drop us a line if you have ideas, requests or suggestions for the website or videos you’d like us to make, or for collaborations you’d like to suggest. We can’t thank you enough for supporting Simple English Videos. We’ll tell you when the new website is up and please follow us on facebook and twitter (@vickivideos) to get progress updates.
These are exciting times for video in ELT. Who’d have thought! Do hope you’ll continue to support us!

 Posted by at 8:09 pm

A Business English Lesson Prototype

 Teaching ideas and lessons  2 Responses »
Jul 012014
 

One of the things I love about teaching Business English is I learn so much from my students. In fact I suspect I’ve often learnt more from this lesson, than my learners. What about you? Have you taught it? And what might a prototypical lesson for pre-work learners be like?

We’ll be exploring this topic and many more in the iTDi course on ‘Breaking Into Business English’. It’s a 4 week online course and we’ll be having our first ‘live’ webinar this Sunday (July 6th, 2014). Click here for more details. Oh, and did I tell you? You can also get certified!

http://itdi.pro/itdihome/vicki.phpSquarelogoLarge

 Posted by at 5:37 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries