Video clips are valuable classroom tools especially when we consider English as a foreign language that is available to listen to only in the classroom and not spoken outside it. In this case. we often use video clips to enhance listening skills and promote speaking as they provide students with an important stimulus for language production and practice.
There are many other advantages of using video clips in EFL classes. Some of these advantages are as follow:
Advantages of using video clips in EFL classes
- Students can observe real settings, actions, and gestures in them.
- They can be stepping stones to fun and communicative activities which include pre-viewing, while-viewing, and post-viewing tasks.
- They make everyday English accessible to learners.
- The speech in them is authentic and the adversity of accents is clear.
- They are rich in English-speaking cultures.
- The language in them is real and the structures are in real contexts and real-life situations.
7 video clips-based tasks in EFL classes
There are many things we can do with these video clips in EFL classes. Here are 7 video clips-based tasks:
1. Sound off and watch
Divide the students into groups. They watch the video clip with the sound turned off.
It is preferable that the clip you select includes emotions with plenty of gestures to stimulate students’ imagination.
Ask students in each group to predict the content of the scene, write their own script, and perform it for the public.
After the performance students watch the scene with the sound turned on and decide which group was the funniest and which one is the nearest to the original.
This exercise is good fun and promotes speaking and imagination as well.
2. Information-gap exercise
Divide the students into two groups. The first group sees and hears a clip; students of the other group only hear it.
After that students of the second group have an interview with students of the first group asking them about what they have seen.
This exercise is good for practising grammatical structures, promoting speaking, and enhancing listening skills.
3. Watch, observe and write
Students view a scene full of actions. Then, ask them to write what they have seen.
This exercise aims at practising new vocabulary and writing compositions.
4. Dictation exercise
Students watch a clip a few times. Then, ask them to write the main words and important phrases that a particular character says.
Divide the students into groups. Ask each group to focus on a character, listen carefully to what it says then write the keywords and phrases of its speech.
The teacher checks the spelling and grammar of what students have written.
After that, ask the students to use their memory or imagination to add to what they have written to compose the whole script of the video clip. Then the groups can perform the scene.
This exercise gives students the opportunity to work on grammar and vocabulary, promote listening, and practice writing.
5. Watch and answer
Ask the students to focus on the actions they can see and the dialogue occurs. The teacher can teach them the key vocabulary beforehand.
After watching, students’ memory and comprehension are tested by asking them a series of true/false questions and asking them to put a series of events in order.
6. Features of pronunciation exercise
We can select a scene that deals with a connected speech in particular prominence (or sentence stress) which is the speaker’s choice and use to convey a meaning.
Students can watch the scene and decide which parts of the sentences are prominent and the meaning that the speaker wants to convey with his sentence stress.
This exercise is very useful to allow students to practice sentence stress in context.
7. Put-in-order exercise
In this exercise, students listen to and see some jumbled mini dialogues.
They are asked to put the mini dialogues in logical order to make a good and real conversation that we can enjoy and understand.
And then students are asked to role-play the whole conversation.
This exercise develops students’ communication skills and encourages them to practice conversational English.
These are the activities I suggest using in EFL classes to make the best use of the video clips. Do you suggest more? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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