Taking the (You)Tube
Annette Margolis, UK
Annette Margolis is a teacher at an Italian Commercial High School and an assistant Cambridge ESOL Young Learner CELTA Extension Tutor. She co-authored ‘Pronunciation’ in the English for Academic Study Series by Garnet Education and the University of Reading. E-mail: annettemargolis@usa.net
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Introduction
Adding visuals to written or spoken texts
Conversation starters
‘Videoke’ and minimising photocopying
Pronunciation awareness: highlighting lip and mouth movements
Student specials
Paperless homework
‘Freeing up’ the time for thinking or why I have chosen these materials/activities
Taking the (You)Tube… or rather how an ageing hippy ‘stoops to conquer’ her young, and not so young students, by misappropriating Youtube for her own teaching ends.
I started ‘youtubing’, for background study listening and this soon snowballed into an enjoyable diversion from the studies itself. I then realised that with minimal preparation I could harness material from it for my lessons, leaving more time for watching music videos and the occasional studying.
The following therefore are some of those lesson ideas-by no means exhaustive- which can be tailored to your class, and which I believe show the versatility of Youtube as a teaching tool.
A. Using Music to Teach Lexis 1: From Words to Video
The Procedure:
- Enter the name of the singer/group and song title in inverted comma into www.youtube.com
- Students listen once or twice without picture and try to imagine the video.
- Students discuss their visualisation with a partner.
- The pair or group can then watch the actual video and note differences.
B. Using Music to Teach Lexis 2: From Video to Words
The procedure below is outlined for a specific song ‘Come Home Billy Bird’ by the Divine Comedy, but is transferable for any song of yours or your students’ choosing. The Billy Bird of the title is a hapless businessman leaving for an ‘Aeroflock’ (sic) flight…
- Talk through the obstacles of airport travel (Having to leave enough time for the flight, go through check-in, make sure your bags are not overweight and, last but by no means least, wait for your bags' re-appearance on the carousel).
- Watch the video with the sound off .
- Learner pairs can:
- give a running commentary.
- write down a list of say ten words or phrases they think will appear
in the song.
- listen to the song and tick off or add key words/phrases they hear
- listen and read lyrics off the internet. Just type ‘‘Come Home Billy
Bird’ lyrics’ into www.google.com . (You can also narrow the
margins of the Youtube screen and the lyrics so listening and
reading can be performed together).
C. Literature
Putting the play title or key words into Youtube can literally illuminate the text. After several class hours studying Romeo and Juliet, it was only on viewing the beginning of ‘their ‘balcony scene’, that one teenage learner admitted to thinking that Juliet ‘was going on a bit’ whilst Romeo was being very quiet, rather than Juliet reciting a monologue whilst Romeo eavesdropped.
D. Science
Snippets of ‘Braniac’ the science programme can be found on Youtube and provide illuminating practice for zero and first conditionals and more especially ‘What happens if’ scenarios. My favourites are the ‘Alkali Metals’ (dropping rubidium and caesium in water- explosive stuff!) and ‘Electric Fences’ in which a rather over gleeful Richard Hammond gets a group of hand-holding Braniacs, the well-meaning science enthusiasts of the title, to touch an electric fence, to find out if and how they conduct electricity.
Paolo, my computer teacher colleague, told me his favourite Youtube viewing is
‘what does YOUR fridge say about YOU ? (Their punctuation not mine),
which consists of having a guided tour of other folks’ fridges. A sort of visual you are what you eat. I have since used it to review countable and countable foodstuffs with beginners and with intermediate learners to discuss how much of ourselves can be 'read' from our fridges ( as well as finding out from which of my students it might be worth accepting a dinner invitation).
Just going to Youtube and looking though some of the most watched videos can supply a plethora of ideas for future classroom use.
Youtube has its own ‘Videoke’ for many songs-just put in the name of the song and videoke- and for those it doesn’t have karaoke style lyrics, lyrics and video can still be viewed together (see above). And there is no photocopying… good news as we save paper.
Watching ‘ Two Chinese Boys’ exaggerated lip-synching with the sound turned down to ‘Take That’s ‘As Long as You Love Me’ ( suggested to me by an EAP Chinese learner) helped my class and I to ‘notice’ English lip movements.
Small groups can mean greater lesson flexibility and if you are in the happy position of having only a handful of students then why not aid student motivation and let them choose the lesson viewing? Pre-viewing justification can make the lesson into a video version of ‘show and tell’ as well as providing a useful warning for possible unsuitable contents.
Students can return to any video they have seen as a reminder for the language introduced in class. For the ‘internet challenged’ I email the links.
On listening to the teams on Radio Four’s ‘Sorry I haven’t a Clue’ being given silly things to do I sometimes think of my own classes. I’ve spent ages looking for (silly ) things to keep them occupied for the lessons but have I really thought of why I want them to do X, Y and Z? The amount of material available on Youtube (and the internet in general) and the speed of internet connection, means I can sift through this freebie material and spend more time on the why as opposed to the what.
I can only think of one proviso and that is, if possible, watch the videos before your students. Most are short so it is not time consuming and you can then veto any embarrassing ones.
Please check the Expert Teacher course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Secondary Teaching course at Pilgrims website.
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