Videos, co-operation and fun: how to linger on words and get the most out of them

It is often hard to find material that will suit your students’ level and interests. For me ideal in-class material is relatively brief and manageable, stimulates the average student’s interest and lends itself to repetition without getting tedious. (not asking for much!)

Another challenge in my teaching has always been how to get the learners to treat words like curiosities found on a deserted beach on one of their outings. They would then scrutinise them perhaps fumbling them clumsily to begin with but getting more and more dexterous as they spent more time taking them in, sizing them up.

It is a tall order expecting young people who are used to today’s fast pace of life and cursory manner of looking at things to slow down and linger on words. However, this is what I often seek to do mustering whatever method I can come up with to hold their attention.

Here is a video which lends itself to “deconstructing”. 

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160110-this-bird-will-out-dance-you-because-it-has-a-built-in-tutu

Bird of Paradise

I used it with teenage students preparing for their Proficiency exam.

You can divide your students into four groups and ask them to watch focusing on content the first time while the second time each group will be assigned to note down one specific group of words: verbs for group 1, nouns for group 2, adjectives for group 3 and adverbs for group 4. They might need to watch a third time.

You would need to pre-teach a couple of words that your students may not be familiar with.

I also showed a map of New Guinea so they could relate the facts to the place.

I provided images for “tutu” and “plume” and a mother tongue equivalent as well as an example in English for “ward off”, “rag”, “polish” and “meticulous”.

Once the students have watched the video, you can invite them to contribute the words they have written down to “reconstruct” the video. They may need a bit of spurring on, but it works well.

The most important thing is that they collectively recreate real language and mull over stringing together words to make meaningful and complete sentences in a playful and enjoyable way.

Indicative groups the students will come up with:

verbs	nouns	adjectives	adverbs
tidy	display ground	incredible	obsessively
decorate	performance	attractive	meticulously
found	female	old	quickly
add	berries	strong	highly
ward off	floor	healthy	too late
use	snake skin	well-fed
afford	cleaning cloth	meticulous
pass on	patch	better
rehearse	rag	critical
tempt in	males	ready
flies off	time	perfect
delivers	effort	precious
lost	preparation
	genes
	audience
	act
	dance steps
	show
	female
	rag
	dance floor
	nest
	cloth
	chance
	heart

The exercise might hold some theoretical interest in that I am not sure how easy it is to isolate different parts of the speech while listening. It didn’t seem to inhibit my students, but of course it is open to testing out!