Video is a powerful classroom tool, as it provides many of the conditions for intrinsic motivation: It is challenging for English learners, it engages students’ curiosity, and it activates fantasy and imagination (Malone & Lepper, 1987). Also, videos provide novelty, which stimulates the brain’s dopamine pathways and leads to increased learning and memory (Fenker & Schutze, 2008). These are just a few of the many research-proven ways that video assists language learning. In my quest for interesting video activities to liven up my own English lessons, I discovered three video activities—Dubbing, Eyes and Ears, and Lists—that capture students’ interest, require them to think critically, and encourage them to negotiate meaning. I presented these at my TESOL 2016 session in Baltimore. 

1. Dubbing

For the Dubbing activity, the teacher chooses a 1- to 2-minute clip that connects with the class curriculum. For example, you might want to find a video clip for the language functions that you’re currently teaching.  I did this activity recently with a chapter on making requests, so I chose a commercial in which a little girl is asking her father to play with her.  First, the students watch the clip with no sound, and partners work together to write their own dialogue for the characters. Students should try to guess what the characters are saying, and if you have a specific function or grammar point as your objective, you should encourage your learners to use that language in their dialogues. After partners finish, they perform for other groups using dramatic voices. Finally, students hear the real audio and compare it with their own words. This activity is a great way to help students use language functions or vocabulary words that you’ve taught in class, and it seamlessly integrates speaking, listening, reading, and writing. However, to maintain good pacing for this activity, it’s important to choose a video clip consisting of six or fewer lines. My students and I recently dubbed “Fashionista Daddy – Doritos Commercial.” During a lesson on modals of request, I found this commercial to have the perfect number of lines and just the right amount of humor!

2. Eyes and Ears

A variation on Dubbing is Eyes and Ears. The teacher plays a short video clip with no visuals—only audio—and students answer several questions about what they hear. These questions could be as simple as “What’s happening in this clip?” or “Why is the man screaming?” By using only audio cues, students are forced to focus on bottom-up listening skills and to make inferences about what the dialogue and sound effects could mean. After listening one to two times with no visuals, partners talk and try to piece together what they believe is going on in the clip. This usually inspires a very lively discussion! It’s also a great chance for learners to practice modals related to what the characters could or might be doing.

To amp up the excitement, the teacher could call on volunteers to share their ideas about what’s happening, and the rest of the class could vote on whether or not they agree. Finally, the students watch the video with sound and visuals and answer the same questions again—this time, with the correct answers. To maximize language use, partners could compare and contrast their initial guesses with their final responses. As far as video clips go for this activity, I suggest choosing one with strange, funny, or mysterious noises to really get the students thinking (and laughing). The “Pepsi Max—Office Interview Ad [HQ version]” has always proven to be a hilarious and successful video for this activity.

Lists

The final activity of my convention session was Lists, a versatile activity I learned from my colleague, Marcia Armstrong. To prepare, the teacher chooses a short video clip in which many objects or actions are shown in quick succession. The clip could be a commercial, a music video, or a movie montage. To start the activity, the teacher tells the class the number of objects or actions they’ll need to list on paper. Then, the teacher plays the clip and, working individually, the students write a chronological list of all the objects or actions they see. Finally, partners or teams meet together to compare their work, and the class reviews their lists together. To make this part more fun, you could award points for groups that can name off the objects or activities in the correct order in which they appeared.

This activity is great for vocabulary enrichment, and it works particularly well if you choose a clip that pertains to your current topic of study. While learning about apartments during a speaking and listening class, for example, I chose the “Apartment Hunt” commercial from Chevrolet. In the commercial, a couple looks at 10 potential apartments—all with humorous flaws—before finally deciding to take the apartment they had initially viewed. This clip provided a great opportunity to add to the apartment-related vocabulary that the students were focusing on in the textbook, and it also inspired great discussion on potential problems they might have had with rental apartments. As with the other activities, this one encourages students to use multiple skills and to cooperate in order to complete the task.

Tips for Success

To make the most of all these activities, I suggest that teachers do the following:

1. Choose short clips for maximum engagement.
2. Tie the clips to the curriculum. If you’re studying a certain topic, grammar point, or language function, search Google for clips that suit your objectives.
3. Scaffold the activities well.
1. Before watching: Activate students’ schema and encourage predictions.
2. Before speaking or writing: Preteach functional language or new words and phrases to push learners to use higher-level language.
   
   

These activities create a lot of energy, interaction, and buzz. They’re great for warm-ups or to add a little excitement to the middle or end of a class, and they always inspire very lively—and loud—discussion among students, which are ideal conditions for a motivating and dynamic language experience. Try one out and see for yourself!

References

Fenker, D., & Schutze, H. (2008, December). Learning by surprise. Scientific American. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/learning-by-surprise/

Malone, T., & Lepper, M. (1987).Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning. In R. Snow & M. J. Farr (Eds.), Aptitude, learning, and instruction: Volume 3: Cognitive and affective process analyses (pp. 223–253). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Meg Parker is an instructor in International Programs at the University of California, Irvine, where she teaches in the IEP, trains teachers for the TEFL certificate program, and designs curriculum for online courses. Her special interests include curriculum development, motivational studies, and the teaching of young learners.