ELT World » Video clips

I can't compete with this

david — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:18:54 +0000

Happy new year to all of you, wherever you find yourself mired in the life of the professional TEFLer. Now, I’ve never resorted to getting my kit off in order to teach a particular language point and I’m sure my students are very grateful for that. Nevertheless, this particular ‘methodology’ may have something going for it, if used by a particular kind of practitioner, as this clip illustrates.

Is this truly innovative or just plain dodgy? You decide for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. should you wish to download this for classroom use, you can do so by clicking here.

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Is Watching Dvds A Good Way To Learn A New Language?

david — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:12:00 +0000

In this article, Ken O’Brien offers his opinion on the use of DVDs in language learning.

Yes and no. One of the positives of course is that you can get to hear the language spoken very naturally. You can hear inflexions, accents and the sounds. This is fine where the version of the language is clear and a standard example, but often films use different dialects or very colloquial language.

Here we begin to see the problems of the DVD and how difficult it can be. But it is still listening practice. Unless you are lucky enough to have regular contact with native speakers this is really as good as it gets.

Another difficulty of course is the length of a DVD. For elementary or less-advanced learners it can be very tiring trying to listen to a language they are learning. We miss a lot of words and often we find ourselves just switching to the subtitles and following those.

But even subtitles are not such a bad thing. We still benefit from listening to the sounds even when we are reading the subtitles. Think of how people who are not native speaker speak your native tongue. It usually reflects their own language and ways of saying things. By exposing our ears to the rhythm and sounds of the new language we can still get some benefit.

So what can we do to get the best benefit from it? Start with much shorter pieces. All DVDs now come with the option to choose scenes rather than play the whole film. Choose a couple of scenes at a time, even if it takes you a day or two to watch. By watching and listening to smaller chunks you stand a greater chance of understanding more, which is always a boost for your confidence.

You could also watch the DVD right through first with subtitles and then try watching sections of it again. At this point you are already familiar with the story so you can concentrate a little more on what people are saying.

Language learning takes a lot of time and we can’t always understand everything but DVDs do offer us exposure to the language being spoken naturally. Rather than get frustrated at our inability to understand we need to think of it as an opportunity to learn just a little bit more.

About the Author

Ken O’Brien has over 12 years experience in language teaching and education. He runs http://www.educatedlinks.com, a website of educational links, articles and other resources. He also speaks a number of foreign languages.

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Classic Chinglish Cockups

david — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:11:00 +0000

Chinglish is widely recognised as being the hybrid of Chinese and English, often creating mesmerising results. I’ve been lucky enough to have been in email correspondence with Jimmy Ng, who I’m pleased to say is a regular reader of the blog. He sent me the following clip, which had me on the floor in stitches:

Thanks again for this, Jimmy!

It the video clip doesn’t work, click here.

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What materials do you need to teach?

david — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 12:51:00 +0000

As ever, a video clip is worth a thousand words…

Here is another informative clip from madridteacher.com

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China in words and images

david — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:48:00 +0000

After my recent post praising Raoul’s China Saloon, I’ve decided to give a short retrospective on China. Apart from the ever impressive forum, many of my posts on China have been video clips, one of my favourite ways of getting to see how people live and teach around the world. First up is a Typical Day in Shanghai, I also asked members of the forum to check out this clip and comment. Gonzo had this to say over on the China forum:

‘Five 8 hour days plus 2 hours a day travelling? No thanks. I was at a university in Shanghai. Teaching hours were in the 16 to 20 X 50 minute lessons a week. No extra duties. It took me 10 minutes on a lazy day to walk to my classroom. Lots of people work in language centres, and that’s where much of the bad news you read emanates from. Shanghai’s fine, travel aside.’

On a similar note, I also commented on one day teaching in Taiwan and took a look at one crazy teacher’s antics teaching kids in Taiwan (do you want to die? – classic teacher threat).

If you teach in China, I’d love to hear about your experiences here or over on the China forum.

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Error Correction with Madrid Teacher

david — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 11:22:00 +0000

Another great video from the maddridteacher.com website, this time focusing on error correction techniques.

He gets through quite a list of alternatives here, and if you’re new to this game, some of what he says might not make too much sense. Definitely something for new teachers to think about, though.

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A Typical Day in Shanghai

david — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:10:00 +0000

I’ve never visited China, let alone considered teaching there, so, as ever, it’s great to see a video clip like this to get an idea of what it’s like:

I’d love to hear from anyone in Shanghai who has anything to add to this ‘typical day’.

This clip was produced by BridgeTEFL, a commercial provider of TEFL courses in the United States. I have no affiliation with this organisation and can’t recommend what they offer, I just think that video clips such as these really do speak a thousand words to anyone thinking about entering TEFL.

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Word Riddle!

david — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:18:00 +0000

Here’s an interesting word riddle video clip you can use with your students. See how quickly you can solve it by taking away one letter but still keeping an real word.

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