Teaching Ideas

Using Video in the ELT Classroom

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LESSON PLAN

AIMS: To introduce various techniques that will help student comprehension when watching English programs on TV or video. MATERIALS: A current news broadcast

PRE-VIEWING ACTIVITIES

ACTIVITY 1: Prediction	Tell the students that later they will watch a recent news broadcast. Ask them to discuss in pairs or groups what some of the news items will be. Once they have generated some ideas, get them to put them in the order in which they think they will be presented.
ACTIVITY 2 (if class size permits)	Construct a table on the blackboard showing the students' choices. If any of the items seem unlikely to be included in the actual broadcast (too domestic/too specialized, etc.) you may wish to ask students to further justify them – alternatively this could be left until they've seen the broadcast. Distribute a worksheet on which the students can put the news items in order and make notes on them.
ACTIVITY 3 - First Viewing	For the first viewing, tell the students that their main aim is to identify the general topic of each item and to note these down in the order in which they are presented.
ACTIVITY 4 - Checking	Students check their responses in pairs or small groups. Following this, elicit the news items from the class and put them on the blackboard, leaving spaces if the class didn't get them all.
ACTIVITY 5 - Second Viewing	Show the broadcast again, and ask students to make more detailed notes on each item. In order to better facilitate this, pause the video after each item.
ACTIVITY 6 - Checking	Students check the information they noted down with their partner or group.
POST-VIEWING ACTIVITIES
Below are some possible follow-up activities. Which of them you choose will depend on the needs and abilities of the particular class involved.
Review & Check:	Students re-view the broadcast and answer general comprehension questions
Focussing:	Focus on one of the news items in detail. Re-view it, highlight key vocabulary. Discuss the particular topic, perhaps with the aid of a related newspaper story.
Analyzing:	Have students discuss the selection and ordering of the news items. Do they agree with the choices? How similar are the items to those in the last news program they watched? Which items are "one-off" stories and which are likely to be continued in subsequent news broadcasts?
A FINAL NOTE...
Finally, in preparing materials and activities such as the ones described above, care should be taken in the selection of the video material, in particular regarding the areas of length and content. A five-minute sequence from a movie is likely to contain more than enough language for the students to cope with, and so it is better to expose students to several short sequences, each followed by activities which practice and recycle the target language, than to show a half-hour sequence and then give students exercises which rely more on memory than understanding. Regarding content, and as with choosing teaching materials of any kind, the needs and proficiency of the students is of paramount importance. It is possible to take scene from a movie such as Pulp Fiction, and through a battery of activities and lots of repetition, have a class of intermediate students more or less completely understand it. However, the benefits of this are questionable: understanding a particular scene won't help them significantly to understand the movie as a whole, and the dense, idiomatic language of that movie won't provide them with much language they can easily use outside the classroom. On the other hand, for a very advanced class, Pulp Fiction may provide a fertile source, not only of contemporary American language, but also of cultural issues which could be used for class discussion.

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Andy Hoodith
Andy Hoodith is an author and works at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies. He is also a life-long supporter of Manchester City Football Club.

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