It’s that Oscar time of year

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Jan 162013
 

With the press full of movie award ceremonies, it’s a great time to be encouraging students to watch English movies.

You might want to begin with four movies that won Golden Globe awards this week. Can your students guess which category they won? What have they heard about them and have they seen them? Here are links to the trailers with clickable transcripts.

(See here for links to versions that will play well on mobile devices.)

All four of those movies are up for Oscars too, along with lots of other movies such as:

Class activities:

Teachers can allocate different movie trailers to watch to different pairs or groups of students and then have them report back to the class.

In smaller classes, students could pick two or three to watch together and discuss.

Or it could be a homework task. Everyone chooses a movie to watch at home and then reports back on whether or not it should win an award.

 

Here is a .pdf worksheet with url links for all the videos: OscarTime2013

You can find all the movies that are up for Oscar awards and in what categories here: http://oscar.go.com/nominees.

Happy watching and may the best movies win!

 

 Posted by at 6:31 am

Miss – Lose

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  2 Responses »
Jan 032013
 

Ever had a student whose told you they lost a flight, train or bus? Here’s a 90 second video English lesson and worksheet to help sort the confusion out.

Miss-Lose - a very quick video English lesson

Clicking on the picture should take you to the video with a clickable transcript over at my Simple English Videos dot com site. (Be sure to get your students to check out the latest movie trailers while they’re there.) The video is also available here on my youtube channel.

And here’s a worksheet.

 Posted by at 7:01 am

More video English lessons and worksheets

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  No Responses »
Dec 132012
 

Here are links to four more of my ‘minute’ video English lessons along with their downloadable pdf worksheets. These videos are available with clickable transcripts at http://www.SimpleEnglishVideos.com/language/

Don’t forget to show your class the movie trailers while you’re at the Simple English Videos dot come site. ( http://www.SimpleEnglishVideos.com ) It’s a fun way for them to get lots of exposure to lots of natural spoken English, and the clickable transcript and Google translate tool make them accessible for self study.

The videos are also available on my youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/vickihollettvideo

Sympathetic - Nice

Sympathetic – Nice

 

By - Until

By – Until

interestedinteresting

Interested – Interesting

car

Used to do – Used to doing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sympathetic-Nice Worksheet

Interesting-Interested Worksheet

By-Until Worksheet

Used to do – Used to doing Worksheet

 

Click here for more ‘minute’ video English lessons

And be sure to check out my ‘Obama Who?’ video lesson.

 Posted by at 8:05 pm

Obama – who? How to handle calls when you’re busy

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  5 Responses »
Dec 022012
 

Anyone for some telephone English? This 90 second video English lesson is very simple. It’s suitable for elementary or pre-intermediate general or business English English learners.  It’s available with a clickable transcript (along with lots of other video English lessons) at https://www.simpleenglishvideos.com/language or directly by clicking the image below.

 

 

It is also available on youtube just here.

Click here for a downloadable classroom worksheet to go with it. I didn’t include a role play in the activities, but perhaps your students can think of celebrities they’d like to call them, what they might want to talk about and then role play the event? Enjoy!

 Posted by at 5:37 am

Worksheets for One Minute Video Lessons

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  4 Responses »
Oct 112012
 

Simple English Videos dot com is two months old today! Wehey! As well movie trailers with clickable transcripts, we’ve been making  one minute video lessons and someone suggested worksheets would come in handy. So we’re celebrating with some pdfs with simple follow on exercises – traditional homeworky-style things for jogging memories.

These links will take you to the pdfs and the pictures underneath will take you to the videos and clickable transcripts. Enjoy!
In Case Worksheet
Remember and Remind Worksheet
Raise and Rise Worksheet
Lend and Borrow worksheet
Last and Take Worksheet
High and Tall Worksheet
Hard and Hardly Worksheet
Fun and Funny Worksheet
Fall and Feel Worksheet
During and For Worksheet
Concentrated and Concentrating Worksheet
Check and Control Worksheet
Alone and Lonely Worksheet

In case

Remember – Remind

Raise – Rise

Lend – Borrow

Last – Take

High – Tall

Hard – Hardly

Fun -Funny

Fall – Feel

During – For

Concentrated – Concentrating

Check – Control

Alone – Lonely

P.S. Don’t forget to show your students all the movie trailers with clickable transcripts while you’re over at the Simple English Videos site. They’re a cool way to see natural spoken language in context.

P.P.S And if you’re think you might like to use one of the movie trailers in class, there’s another worksheet here.

P.P.S Come back soon because we have more of these lessons in the works.

 Posted by at 12:01 am

One Minute Video English Lessons

 Teaching ideas and lessons, Video and tech  5 Responses »
Sep 112012
 

It’s www.simpleEnglish.com ‘s one month birthday tomorrow. Yay!

So far the site has had around 2,738 hits from 106 countries. I’ve no idea how good or bad those stats are but I love the idea of people from 106 countries being able to access the site. We’ve been adding new movie trailers steadily so there are now 60 available with clickable transcripts. (I think movie trailers are great vehicles for teaching – here are some generic lesson ideas to go with movie trailers. And for some homework tasks see here.) Plus – as of today – there are 10 one minute video English lessons. (More on that in a minute!)

We’ve learnt a lot this month. Dark colours might be cool in Europe, but Japan likes bright and cheerful. (Thank you Mrs B!) We now plan to build a separate section of the site for young learners. Also importantly I learnt that you may think you’ve switched off Google Adsense adult ads, but you need to double check. Eeek! Thank you for putting me right about that Charles! If anyone has any feedback, suggestions or thoughts about the website, please pass them along! What do your students think of it? We’re grateful for all suggestions.

So anyway, we thought we’d celebrate our one month birthday with some one minute English lessons.  You can watch them with clickable transcripts here and I’ve also added them to my youtube channel. They’re low budget movies made by us, mostly in our living room. Ha! I feel uncomfortable seeing myself on camera, (understand how my camera-shy students feel) but I love the extra possibilities video provides for being able to site language in context. So overall they were fun to make and if they seem popular we’ll make more.

But here’s the puzzle – if we make more, what should they be about? We’ve targetted some easily confused words and expressions in this batch, but they could be about anything really. Time is the only constraint.

So imagine you have the full attention of your class – but for only one minute. What would you be able to teach? Any suggestions?

 Posted by at 4:54 am

ELT video lesson sources

 Video and tech  2 Responses »
Sep 092012
 

I love teaching with video and find I avoid taking audio materials into class these days. Luckily blogs with creative video lesson ideas have been blossoming on the web, and so have sites that we can send our students to for out-of-class viewing. This is a very incomplete list because there are so many, but here are some of my favourites:

Videos for watching in class with lesson ideas:

  • Jamie Keddie’s Lessonstream – Jamie now has more than seventy lessons. Do check out his demonstrations of a technique he calls video-telling if you haven’t already.
  •  Kieran Donaghy Keiran’s a shorts fan, which ironically means he tends to focus on longer videos.  Again he has some great lesson ideas.
  • Designer Lesson Ideas is a group blog that includes non-video lessson too, but  many employ video creatively so I’m including it here.
  • In amongst other stuff  TheTeacherJames also has some nice video lesson ideas.

Videos for students to watch out of class:

  • As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m a big fan of English Central because of the  variety of videos on offer. Another site with a wide range of motivating videos is English Attack. Both these sites provide gapfill and dictation tasks. English yappr takes dictations to another level. It has an ingenious system where creating a transcript becomes a group task – very motivating, I’d imagine. It also has ‘clear voice’ button’ and British listeners may be tickled to discover that that means British voices can be replaced with ‘merican.
  • ESL videos has videos submitted by teachers who also provide comprehension questions. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the multiple choice Qs but thought it worth a mention because it has one of the largest collections of videos I’ve seen. You can submit videos there yourself if you like.
  • Real English has been a pioneer in vox pop recordings made in the street and usefully for lower levels, the videos are graded for difficulty.
  • We mustn’t forget he wonderful TED site which has stacks of fascinating presentations on a wide variety of subjects. (Remember to show your students how to use its clickable transcripts.)
  • And of course there’s also my new site, Simple English Videos , where students can watch the latest movie trailers supported by clickable transcripts, a learners dictionary and google translate. Click here to see and article I wrote about it on Teaching Village which has some homework tasks.

    I hope others running video sites (which I know isn’t easy) will forgive me for missing them out. Space and my memory have been the issues. Please pass along other links in the comments. Also, I’m aware that there are some terrific young learners video sites around and I’m hoping others more experienced in that field can fill us in on those.

    So which sites are your favourites? Please tell me!
     

 Posted by at 9:01 am

Simple English Videos Dot Com goes live!

 Video and tech  2 Responses »
Aug 112012
 

Video is such a motivating medium for English learners and a fantastic resource for the flipped classroom. But it has limitations if we want to send students off to watch something on their own. What can they do if they can’t understand a word or phrase and we’re not around to help? And how can they find out what things mean if they don’t know where one word stops and another starts?

But that was yesterday. Today we can have:

  • clickable transcripts
  • online learners dictionaries
  • translation tools

My students’ eyes light up when they see videos that have clickable transcripts. They give them instant and precise control over how the video plays. And there’s no more frustration if they don’t understand because they can check words and phrases in a dictionary, and even translate a whole script if they need too.

And that’s what my new website is all about.

We’re starting with 24 movie trailer videos and there will be new ones every week. There are comedies, thrillers, music movies, dramas – something for everyone. So rather than ‘presentations-genre’ English such as those at the wonderful TEd.com, this website provides ‘conversation-genre’ videos.  Oh, and did I say it was free? Yes, it’s totally free!

I’ve set up a different Twitter account that’ll announce new content as it goes up. So please tell your students to follow me posting for Simple English videos as @VickiVideos. That way they’ll catch the latest movie trailers. And tell them to comment on the videos at the site too. I’ll be responding.

And please let me know what you think of the new site too. All tips and advice will be gratefully received.

 Posted by at 9:41 pm

Video sites for learning English

 Video and tech  2 Responses »
Aug 042012
 

There’s never been a better time to learn English. You can connect with other learners on community sites like English Club and Livemocha, and there’s so much good video content around. I’m a big fan of sites like English Central, and englishyappr which have stacks of entertaining videos that are bound to motivate. And then there’s the glorious TED site with riveting talks by international experts.

Now there’s something interesting about TED talks that my students often don’t know about. Many have interactive scripts, so if you click on the transcript button, you can control the videos. It’s a powerful tool for a language learners because it lets them jump forward and back and choose what sections they want to hear again.

It recently became possible to do a similar thing with youtube videos if they have captions, but it’s a bit of a fiddle there. I prefer the elegant TED layout better and for a good while I’ve hankered after having such a tool for videos I make or use.

Well, guess what! After a good deal of trial and error, we’ve worked out how to do it! So watch this space for news of my latest project. We’ve been building a cool new website for learners with engaging videos, opportunities to connect and yes, clickable transcripts!

Does it sound appealing? And what video sites do you and your students enjoy?

 

 

 Posted by at 4:59 am

10 different ways to say ‘cheers’ and a grammar animation

 Video and tech  No Responses »
May 132012
 

Many thanks to the kind folks from around the world who responded to my Facebook plea and who now star in this video. It was lots of fun to work with you and make.

I’ve been wondering how animations might help students with grammar. If English teachers could have a penny for every time we’ve been asked ‘How you say…?’ or ‘What means…?” we’d all be very rich, so this video seemed to provide a good opportunity to experiment, and highlight some useful words and phrases for talking about language too like stress, syllable, abbreviation etc. So there are two short videos here – one on how to say cheers in 10 different languages and a second one with some grammar animations. All thoughts and suggestions grateful received.

 

 Posted by at 12:40 am
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