The opera singer meets the rapper! A few weeks back we videoed Jason R Levine (aka Fluency MC) interviewing Rachel of Rachel’s English. Rachel acquired some unique skills for teaching pronunciation via opera singing. The interview has aired now, and in case you missed it, here it is in its entirety. Enjoy!
A couple of weeks ago, Carl Dowse prompted me to start a Scoopit for videos suitable for technical English students. Carl has a great scoopit list for business English teachers, but there didn’t seem to be a techie English equivalent.
My techie scoopit doesn’t have many videos yet (please email me me if you have suggestions to add) and I’m not planning to publish it as a newsletter. But in case others are looking for techie class videos, here’s the link:
http://www.scoop.it/t/techie-english
And as Scoopit turned out to be so easy for bookmarking, I started another one for odd videos I might want to use in class some day as well.
http://www.scoop.it/t/video-english
I must confess, I wondered whether I didn’t have better things to do with my time when I started these.
But already I’ve found there are videos that I’m sure I’d have forgotten about if I hadn’t scooped, as it were. Thanks Carl!
There are so many uses for video in English lessons, but I think the one that inspires me most its ability to remove blindfolds (as Peter Viney so neatly put it). With video we can provide more information about who might say what to whom, what their relationship is, where they are and how they’re feeling. In short, we can provide more context, and context is so crucial for meaning and use.
If we want to teach the difference between the verbs ‘see’ and ‘watch’, for example, we’re going to want to show that seeing is something that happens whether we’re paying attention or not. It’s difficult to set up a natural context to illustrate that in a classroom. But with video we can go anywhere – a kitchen for example where we see someone stealing a freshly baked cookie. 
‘Hey, I saw that’ wouldn’t add much understanding as a written sentence in a course book, but demonstrated in context in a video it illustrates the ‘paying attention or not’ concept beautifully. ‘Actually’ is another example. We can tell our students that it means ‘really’ or ‘in fact’, but if they’re going to understand how to use it, they need to see it in use in context. Again, video is great for that. These sorts of things don’t work with audio alone.
So it seems to me that if video is available, it’s silly to teach without it these days. And that poses a problem for ELT publishers. They’d love to employ video widely but they know that sadly many teachers still don’t have access to it, so mainstream courses tend to get published with a bit of video, but not too much because they need to work for everyone. But does ‘one-size-fits-all’ really work because if teachers have access to video, why would they want to restrict their classes with audio? Why wouldn’t they want to step outside the classroom and show (really show) the language in context?
And on a similar but different point – another video benefit that I think has all sorts of (as yet pretty much untapped) potential is animation. We were making a video about indirect questions the other day. You know how the word order changes when questions get embedded with phrases like ‘Could you tell me …?’ ‘Do you know…?’ Take a look at this:
I put that video together rather hurriedly and when I get time I’d like to go back and make it look sharper. But I’m pretty sure that it will be more helpful to play this for my students than to have them look at static sentences in their course book.
Do you have you any suggestions for what I should do when I re-edit it? All thoughts and ideas will be gratefully received and shared. And what do you think the main benefits of video are? And do you agree that that if you do have access to video, it’s just plum daft to teach without it these days?
Here are two more short video English lessons. They’re also available with clickable transcripts (handy for making gap-fills and other exercises) at my Simple English Videos website.
Here are some more minute video English lessons. As well as my youtube channel, you can also see them at Simple English Videos where they’re available with a clickable transcript that you can use to make exercises or role plays.
We have more videos like this in the works and if you’d like to know when a new one comes out, subscribe to my new weekly newsletter. It has links to all the movie trailers we’ve published each week, and also any English lesson videos we’ve made. You can subscribe here.
Don’t forget to subscribe to the weekly newsletter.
Bad-model Good-model videos have a long history in management and business English training. The first time I came across the genre was in a series of management training videos from Video Arts (of John Cleese fame) but the technique was later employed very successfully in business English by Derek Utley and Jeremy Comfort of York Associates. Their early videos were picked up and remade by OUP and perhaps some of you will remember the resulting lovely’ Effective’ skills series? Those videos inspired me to play around with the genre myself so back in the 90s I wrote a little video called ‘Play it Again Sam’ for OUP.
But I digress. The way these videos work is you see someone performing a business task, but very badly. The class has to identify what they did wrong and decide how they could have done things better. They then act out a new and better version of the scenario before they get to see a second video where things go well. And if they haven’t got fed up by then, they can go on to compare the ‘good’ version they created with the ‘good’ version in the second video.
I wondered if it would be possible to do something similar again, but much shorter. Could we get something down to a minute? We couldn’t, but we got pretty close. Here are our attempts and I hope you find them useful for your small talk lessons.
I’ve now made these videos available with clickable transcripts (great for making comprehension tasks) on Simple English Videos dot com here and here.
I’m sure many of you will be familiar with The Consultants-E and the irrepressible Nicky Hockly and Gavin Dudeney. Together they run the online training and consultancy service to do with the use of technology in language teaching.
But what you might not know is I’ve been producing videos for The Consultants-E, including an ever growing set of case studies. This is a series they commissioned where teachers share their experiences of introducing technology in their classrooms. The videos are freely available on The Consultants-E’s youtube channel and they are well worth checking out of you’re embarking on any e-learning projects.
The Consultants-E are 10 years old this year and they’re celebrating in style. This month they’re giving away a free scholarship to one of their certified online courses and the winner can choose between a Cert ICT or Cert IBET, so you get an accredited qualification. I’ve spoken to lots of teachers who have taken these courses and without exception, they’ve all thought they were terrific. (It’s actually pretty easy to make promotional videos for the Consultants-E because everyone you interview raves about them!) So hurry up if you’re interested in applying for that scholarship because the deadlines are approaching.
But there’s more…
There’s another freebie this month! They are giving away an ebook called ‘The Little Book of Blogs’. It’s a collation of blog posts by Nicky, Gavin and many other The Consultants-E trainers, that was expertly curated by Anne Fox. (Yes, that’s the same Anne Fox who co-hosts the award winning Absolutely Intercultural podcasts.) Anne has packed the book with useful free resources and expertise for teachers and I’m honoured to say that includes some of my blog! So head here to download your free copy today.
So happy birthday The Consultants-E. And before you go everyone, please click below and check out the 10th birthday video I made. How did they manage to get all that done in 10 years? See – I told you they were irrepressible.
I watched a 10 minute presentation this morning by Diana England packed with ideas about how to use our one minute videos in class. Here’s a very brief summary.
A lot of the videos (available at http://www.SimpleEnglishVideos.Com/language/) explore differences between confusing words, so one thing to do is use them ‘straight’ as Diana put it – so show the videos and then get students to tell one another how the words differ in meaning.
Alternatively you might get students to think about the language point before they watch – coming up with their ideas on how the words differ in meaning and form/grammar, and then have them watch the video listening out for the rules.
Diana pointed out that the tapescript (available under the videos) can be copied and pasted, providing a text for exploring differences in meaning. Students can use it to rehearse and act out some of the dialogues, and it can also be used to make gapfills.
And if that isn’t enough – a really cool idea Diana had was to follow on with the students making their own one minute videos about words and phrases that are relevant to their own needs and interests.
Here’s a link to Diana’s presentation which was part of IH’s 60th birthday celebrations. I took my very first teacher training course with IH and then went on to work for them too and one of the things I loved about the IH schools I worked in was the way ideas got shared around. This 60th birthday conference is no exception. Many happy returns IH and a BIG thank you to Diana for sharing these ideas!
And if you have any ideas about words or topics you’d like to see illustrated in a one minute video English lesson, please pass them along!
These can be viewed at our Simple English Videos Dot Com website where they are available with a free clickable transcript.
And you’ll also find them on youtube. (Please tell all your friends about them and make sure they subscribe to
Also, if you have any ideas for good topics for one minute lessons, please pass them along.
Probably the best place to view these videos is over at SimpleEnglishVideosDotCom where they are available with a clickable transcript. Click here for all the language videos and here for the movie trailers. Otherwise they are available on my youtube channel (why not subscribe today!)
Or you can simple click below. Hope you like them!
