QUESTION: My students use the computer lab for 1 hour per week and work on various other projects with their teacher. We watch National Geographic videos, play songs in English and, once in a while, watch a whole movie. This year I would like to offer the same activities, but I am looking for something outside of the coursebook publisher's materials. Can you help?
There are two suggestions we would like to offer you. The first has to do with computer lab activities and the second with project work tasks.
1. To begin, work with your teachers as 'a member of the team' to experiment with downloading from ESL/EFL websites. You can add new activities to what you've already used successfully into by-level syllabi (i.e. pre-junior to pre-lower). In your question, you write that you'd like to use the same activities you found in commercial software; this may mean that you and your teachers will need to create activities on your own. (Visit websites for making worksheets and card/ board games, e.g. http://www.mes-english.com/ http://www.eslhq.com/)
2. Your teachers do projects with their learners. Great! You could attempt to expand the range and variety of project work tasks. First of all, plan to organize your pool of project tasks by topic. Within each topic you can then list your tasks by level. (www.manythings.org or www.esl-library.com)
EXAMPLE TASK (for B1 learners):
Read and or listen to the text at http://www.manythings.org/wikipedia/22002.html.
1. Find the names of some of the indigenous populations of today's Canada. (Search for "aboriginal peoples of Canada").
2. List the ten provinces and three territories of Canada.
Project Work: Draw a map of Canada and label it with your answers from 1. and 2. above.
Here are three ways to start your pool of project work tasks:
(1) Hold project events (or Project Day) where learners can display artistic project work for other learners or parents to view. Both teachers and learners will be motivated to 'show their stuff' at the Project Day. Learners can begin by writing or drawing their impressions and thoughts. Some can be encouraged to create simple media projects (like 6-slide powerpoint presentations or 30-second video clips) with their teacher's guidance to share with their peers,
(2) Search and select reading/listening texts by project theme. Choose texts which, with a few elicitation questions written by the teacher, will stimulate the learners to express their opinions and pursue discussion. Extension activities of such discussion can include class debates, polls using student-written questionnaires and in-class writing of pair interviews on the topic of these texts.
(3) Find short films and plan Observation tasks, appropriate to learners' ages and levels. Observation tasks can be helpful for teaching 'body language' and other paralinguistic features of human communication.
EXAMPLE OF AN OBSERVATION TASK:
You select a 40-second sequence - a scene from a film where two strangers (an elderly man in a suit and tie and a young woman in a jogging suit) on a city park bench begin a conversation.
Pre-viewing: Teacher shows a still of the two characters,using pause button and no sound, and asks the following elicitation questions: "Where are these two people?", "What can you tell about them from their appearance, posture, dress...?", "Do they know each other?" Learners answer.
While-viewing: (1) "Without listening to what is being said, observe both people and tell me more about them or, if you want to, change the answers you gave me before." Teacher plays the sequence with no sound.
(2) "Let's look at this bit once more. Please note down any glances, gestures or movements both people make." After this second viewing, learners give their answers and guess what the dialogue between the two people is.
Post-viewing: "Let's hear what they are saying." Teacher plays the sequence with the sound up this time. Afterwards, the teacher asks. "When you heard them speak, how did your image of these people change?" Learners discuss their interpretations of body language and/or the dialogue.
A word of caution: Watching a whole movie is fine for 'exposure' to the target language, but, for 'teaching with film', remember that one minute of film can fill a 45-minute lesson! Specific pre-viewing, while-viewing and/or post-viewing tasks, which can elicit practice in listening, speaking, reading and writing, can be planned around even very short film segments and sequences. Film is a rich medium and communicates message after message (and, at times, a number of synchronous messages!), through visual, auditory and kinesthetic channels. In other words, a little bit of film goes a long way! Exploit this medium with a very few well-thought-out tasks requiring learners to view a short sequence more than once.
Suzanne Antonaros and Lilika Couri,
January 2014
