LUCRARE METODICO-ȘTIINȚIFICĂ PENTRU OBȚINEREA GRADULUI DIDACTIC I [307953]

UNIVERSITATEA „ȘTEFAN CEL MARE” [anonimizat] I

[anonimizat],

Conferențiar univ. dr. LUMINIȚA- ELENA TURCU

CANDIDAT: [anonimizat]. LOREDANA-ANIȘOARA FLOREA (căsătorită MUREȘAN)

SUCEAVA, 2019

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction …………………………………………………………………3

Chapter I – Knowing the student…………………………………………. .7

The language learner

Encouraging the learner’s autonomy

Learner’s [anonimizat]

2.1 A review of policy and research evidence

2.2 A strategic approach to ICT

2.3 Beliefs about digital technologies and their potential

2.4 Using Video in the EFL classes

2.5 Approaches, [anonimizat]

3.1 Educational resources and learning resources

3.2 Video in teaching language construction

3.3 Teaching reading using video content

3.4 Teaching listening using video content

3.5 Teaching writing using video content

3.6 Teaching speaking using video content

Chapter IV – A bird’s eye view on some coursebooks with DVDs

4.1 Close-Up Series

4.2 Life Series

4.3 Super Minds Series

4.4 Keynote series

Chapter V – Methodical Applications

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

In the last decades there have been a [anonimizat] a massive technological development that has changed society profoundly and that has demanded educational services according to the markets’ requirements.

[anonimizat], and now it’s even more. Teachers have to master their school subject in order to teach but also to be very good judges of characters; [anonimizat], to “scan” them, to analyze their needs and to provide a proper learning scheme that works for them.

[anonimizat] a [anonimizat]. [anonimizat]. Sometimes at the beginning of a teaching career you can hear lines like “you will grow out of it” or “this will pass too” or “you’ll get use to it” when something challenges you or troubles you in terms of teaching results. But if you turn your frustration into a challenge, results will show up. Teaching and learning standards are a [anonimizat], are demanded to meet those standards that are rigorous and measurable.

Our students and their needs are not the same everywhere. [anonimizat]. The same teaching strategies can be fruitful in some place but a complete failure in another. A strategy can be fully implemented if it’s appropriately differentiated for the students.

Taking into consideration all these facts, I [anonimizat] a [anonimizat]. During one of the plenaries held at an International Conference for English Teachers, I listened to David Evans (a magnificient teacher trainer and author of different English coursebooks) talking about how to motivate students to learn. The Speaker told the audience about different studies that revealed the fact that students are much more motivated when they are promised a reward (aka. a carrot) and less motivated and productive at the threat of a penalty (aka. the stick). Obviously, carrots are no longer a treat unless you are vegan (or rabbit), but we can replace the carrot from the analogy with something that can raise a hefty dose of dopamine and create a real physiological reward- chocolate, and consider having chocolate covered carrots.

Three young children enjoying a portable, healthy snack – a carrot on a stick Photo: Getty Images

Stick thinking is old fashioned. For many years in the past, stick thinking has dominated the management of people – in schools, in by gone days at least (fortunately), they literally used to hit pupils/ students with a stick, fines are designed to stick a person’s wallet and many bosses/ teachers/ parents demand compliance through yelling, so loud that someone would want to stick his/ her fingers in his/her ears. Fortunately, research has proven that sticks are not all that motivating, although all out terror can definitely be described as highly motivating, under the right circumstances.

A team of accounting professors from Michigan State university conducted an experiment, a simulation game in regard to the motivational factors. The game was set up, so the participants got to be the boss or the ones being bossed. In the game, the boss could use a chocolate carrot or a stick approach. Both the stick and the “carrot” were financial. Performance on the task was monitored. The workers who were rewarded with a bonus, actually put in more effort. Workers who had their pay docked for poor performance, did not raise their game, due to the punishment, but instead did less.

“The brain likes rewards. Of course, it can be quite a challenge finding seeds that grow into chocolate covered carrots, especially on a tight budget.

And for most of us, carrots grow too slow – we need instant gratification. But if you use your imagination, you can find a few “legal”, non-fattening ways to get a quick dopamine lift.”. We could go jogging or to the gym, have a good laugh, play a computer game, watch a good movie or read a good book, drink a cup of coffee/ tea or a glass of wine.

In the same way we can motivate students, with things they like doing, they enjoy, with things they know how they work. We live in a digitalize era and children are mastering the digital tools: mobile phones, gadgets, computer games etc. We, as teachers, must keep up the pace, and facilitate learning and language acquisition using these tools. Luckily, availability is not a problem and we can provide English lessons using different types of coursebooks that have DVD support, apps, websites and free authentic online materials.

An important factor in a competitive teaching domain is the prestige thought to be around video mastery in the EFL classes. Video materials are also used to expand aspects of the curriculum. Video is commonly inserted in the lesson to give a lift to methodology in terms of interest and motivation, to widen the range of teaching techniques in use, to enable complex presentations, to provide a modern design to a course by expanding the content of the units and the type of skills wanted to be developed. “Video can literally provide the complete picture: listening comprehension reinforced by watching comprehension. Video is considered potentially capable of developing a wide range of linguistic and semi-linguistic skills e.g. highlighting language functions, pinpointing non-verbal signals, showing the relationship between linguistic and paralinguistic features.”

Video is more often used with a specific interest, on all levels of English language learners. It is used to develop different skills at different times. Having activities with watching video contents demands a certain level of proficiency from the teacher’s part, in order to carry out more than one task concurrently. Students need to cope with having drills that prompts alertness and focuses attention at the same time. Introductory and follow up activities are compulsory, and everybody is aware of the need for support material.

Despite interest in video and frequent references to its potential, there still is an uncomfortable gap between actual and ideal use of it. There are alternative softwares for all levels, for general and specific purpose. Nowadays, the coursebooks market provide la vast range of books with DVD support, which helps the teacher to make the subject that he/she teaches attractive, interactive and reliable. Rapid technological development has benefited ELT, and has increased the methods and techniques applied in the EFL classes. In this way, teachers can merge very well the traditional methods with the modern ones, and can create and design the appropriate approaches for the students, according to their needs and interests.

Networking is also essential in the present, for our students and for teachers as well. Digital tools facilitate interaction and opens our world. Information is just a click away. Physical boundaries are no longer obstacles. People from different countries interact in English, students all over the world are inter-connected and share opinions, ideas, pictures, videos. Understanding of local trends, issues, pressures, culture and language are also key in developing the best possible opportunities for progress to be made. Teachers are facilitators of these inferences as they bring into class more and more real life.

In this study, I am going to present the learner and the way he can develop his learning autonomy with the help of the teachers, what constitutes the students’ motivation, how the ICT tools and applications have developed in the last decades, some of the modern coursebooks, websites and apps that I consider a very useful support for teachers and students in the EFL classes, lesson planning, practical examples of the way these modern tools can be used, and the final conclusions.

CHAPTER 1

Knowing the student

The Language Learner

We are to talk in this chapter about the average learner, as pupils and students learn differently. Some of them are early developers, others late ones, some of them progress gradually, others in leaps and bounds. We, as teachers, should see where they place themselves on the learning ladder. We need to draw our attention to the characteristics which are relevant for language teaching.

There are many similarities between learning one’s mother tongue and learning a foreign language, although there are to be considered the learners’ age and the time that is available for the process. It is not known somebody to have found a universal pattern of language learning and teaching that everyone agrees with. Many things depend on which mother tongue the learners speak, their emotional background, their social status and what triggers them and motivates them to learn. “But the system of language and the understanding of it seems to fall into place for many children in the same way.” Children and adults learn differently, so make sure they understand the requests and they know what they have to do.

In the book “Creative Teaching: English in the early years and primary classroom”, Chris Horner and Vicky Ryf present three major themes in the way teachers teach:

Planning and assessment for learning;

Creating a learning culture;

Understanding how learning develops.

These themes construct an approach to learning that place the student at the heart of the curriculum and enables the teacher “to be creative and imaginative in facilitating learning.” The dialogue should be part of the feedback that we give to students. It should reflect a real interest regarding the child’s effort and to offer confirmation of what works for him or what areas might be improved upon. Students should be aware of the learning objectives and how they could be met.

Scrivner states that teaching is basically a permanent processing of options. At every point in the lesson, a teacher has a number of options available. He/ she should be able to decide to do what he/ she has planned, or to do something else that could work for that particular class of students, or to do nothing at all. To become a better teacher, it is important to be aware of as many options as possible and in this way he/ she can generate his/ her own rules and guidelines as to what works and what doesn’t. Creative teachers provide opportunities for students by involving them in deciding what they need or want to learn, to discover. Learners should be encouraged to reflect on what they already know and to decide what they want to learn. Setting individual learning schemes in consultation with the students is another way of involving them in their learning process. Some students can be motivated, others can be obliged to learn, others can do both depending on the sequence of studying. Sometimes young students don’t know what they want to study or to find out and how to accomplish some learning tasks, so the teacher is ought to show him “the path”. But being autonomous learner up to some degree on his/her preferred ways of working and having some choice on how to present their work can encourage a creative approach to learning.

Getting students to talk English in class can be extremely easy or extremely difficult. If it’s a good class atmosphere, students who get on with each other and whose English is at an appropriate level, will often participate willingly and enthusiastically if the teacher gives them a suitable topic and task. If you have a class of students at the beginning of a cycle or a mixed class regarding the level of second language acquisition, then things are not so easy. Or maybe the topic is not of interest. Sometimes they have a natural reluctance to speak and to take part in class activities. In such situations the role/ roles that the teacher plays is highly important.

The age of the students is a huge factor in the teacher’s decision about how and what to teach. Students of different ages have different needs, competences and cognitive abilities. Children of kindergarten and primary age acquire much of a foreign language through play, whereas adults expect a greater use of abstract thought.

Children who learn a new language early have a facility with the pronunciation. Lynne Cameron suggests that children “reproduce the accent of their teachers with deadly accuracy” (2003:111). Older children are better learners in terms of acquisition, but not pronunciation. The relative superiority of children over the age of 10 may be related to their increased cognitive skills, that allows them to understand more abstract approaches to language teaching.

Older learners can also reach “high level of proficiency in their second language” (Lightbown and Spada 2006: 73). They could encounter difficulty in approximating a very good pronunciation than children do. Yet, every student is an individual with different experiences inside and outside the classroom. Much depends upon individual learner differences and upon motivation.

1.2 Encouraging Learner’s autonomy

To compensate the fact that the classroom time has its limitations and to enhance the chances for successful language learning and acquisition, the learners need to be encouraged to develop their own learning strategies in order to become autonomous students. These self-learning strategies could be influenced or conditioned by their educational culture. Researchers see autonomy and associated learner behaviour as very important.

Mark James suggest that one of the main goal of English language teaching is for “students to apply outside the classroom what they have learnt inside the classroom” (2006: 151). Sarah Cotterall considers learner’s autonomy “an essential goal of all learning” (2000: 109). Joanne McClure shares the same beliefs. While working at the Nanyang Technological university in Singapore, she wanted her students to develop an awareness of their own learner’s profile. One of the things she wanted her students “to develop was a systematic approach to their reading, writing and research and to become increasingly aware of the way in which successful writers structure their research (McClure 2001: 143).” Sarah Cotterel and Joanne McClure talk about the fact that students should think over how they learn and in this way they can take charge of their own learning.

Teachers train and encourage students to be autonomous. They provide help to students in thinking how they can learn better, and the learner training is just the first step in self-directed study. “Students are encouraged to think about what (and how) they have been learning, are made to think about different ways of listening and are offered different strategies for them to choose from.”

Students can go through checklists of “to do”/”can do” statements at the end of a unit, or in which way they can focus better on listening or what information to look for in a listening material, by using their knowledge of the world, or to complete specific charts on a studying segment, to develop a systematic approach to their writing and studying (taking notes, making spidergrams, writing/ keeping journals or e-journals, files with materials they found helpful, recordings, etc.).

Figure 2

Figure.1 Students’ ways of self-studying

Learners can be involved in their own learning process through a graded sequence of metacognitive tasks that are integrated into the teaching/learning process.

• Make instructional goals clear to the learners.

• Help learners to create their own goals. 12 Language Teaching Methodology

• Encourage learners to use their second language outside of the classroom.

• Help learners become more aware of learning processes and strategies.

• Show learners how to identify their own preferred learning styles and strategies.

• Give learners opportunities to make choices between different options in the classroom.

• Teach learners how to create their own learning tasks.

• Provide learners with opportunities to master some aspect of their second language and then teach it to others.

• Create contexts in which learners investigate language and become their own researchers of language.

It is wishful and ideal for students to take over their own learning. As a first step in the process, they will be able to use the new language to express their ideas, opinions. Then they can make their own dialogues, their own conversations, they can become creative in speaking English. Dictionaries help students to acquire a proper language proficiency according to their capacities, as they are very complex and have the necessary tools to help students in pronunciation, proper usage and giving synonyms. On line dictionaries have the audio support as well, so the learner can check his/ her pronunciation and they can replay the sound in their own pace. When students can help or make decisions/ suggestions about what happens in and out of class, the lessons are more creative, interactive and improved.

Keeping journals is also a way of developing the autonomy of a learner. Students need to consider a way to receive feedback if their activity is constructive, if their journals are public or private, and how often their writings can be assessed. Feedback is very important and even more important is to be done in such manner to motivate the student.

The self-access centre (SAC) is another alternative for self-study, additional to class learning. At the centre students have access to loads of materials, from books, worksheets, collections of learner literature, reading texts to listening materials, CDs and DVDs. They can connect to the intranet or internet and search for information, study programmes, e-learning platforms, etc. Students need to be trained by teachers in order to facilitate its use to student’s best advantage. Sometimes websites may look boring or overwhelming. Many teachers design quizzes to make students explore them. Highly motivated and potentially autonomous students can help their colleagues in the learning process, as teacher’s assistants. Students can become members of online communities, can share ideas with other students from other schools in different countries, can improve their language level by using online vocabulary games, grammar interactive drills, storytelling, songs, film sequences, and so on. Many course books have e-platforms and sections dedicated to learner’s independent work.

1.3. Learner’s Motivation and interest

Penny Ur says in one of her books that “motivation” is a term difficult to define and it would be more useful to think in terms of the “motivated” learner. In the Cambridge dictionary, the term “motivation” is defined as “the willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness”. Considering this definition, the motivated student should be willing, even eager, to invest effort in learning activities and to make progress. Student motivation makes the teaching and learning process to be easier, more pleasant and more productive.

Gardner and Lambert have written in their books that motivation is very strongly related to achievement in language learning, but it’s necessary to consider which is the cause and which the result. It hasn’t been reached to a conclusive evidence in regard to whether motivation is more, or less, important than a natural capacity for learning (languages, in our case) or which comes first, motivation or success. But the Teacher’s job is to encourage student to develop their abilities to enhance motivation and to make it a constancy during the process of acquiring knowledge.

Students are motivated in different ways. To motivate them, teachers have to show them that the approached topics within a lesson are necessary for their lives or to make them desirable and intriguing.

Intrinsic motivation comes from within- a desire or a need that the brain considers as pleasurable or important. When we are motivated in this way, neurotransmitters such as dopamine are released in our brains (LeDoux, 2002). This gives us the settings to accomplish our goals. The same neurotransmitters are also released when our goal is achieved. The pleasure chemical- dopamine, makes us want to attain those things again in order to repeat the good feeling. Penny Ur said in one of her books that “intrinsic motivation is in its turn associated with what has been termed «cognitive drive» -the urge to learn for its own sake, which is very typical of young children and tends to deteriorate with age.

Extrinsic motivation is associated with rewards and/or punishments. Some researchers consider that extrinsic motivators change the brain and shift the goal from reaching the objective to obtaining some tangible reward/rewards or just avoiding punishment. Receiving the reward will cause dopamine to be released and this will train the brain to have good feelings about it. This type of motivation has sources that are inaccessible to the influence of the teacher (the desire of students to please other authority figure such as parents, the wish to achieve high results in an external exam, or peer-group influences) and sources that can be affected by the teacher (success and its rewards, failure and its penalties, authoritative demands, tests, competition etc).

Girard (1977) emphasized in an article that it is an important part of the teacher’s job to motivate learners. “In more recent ‘learner-centred’ approaches to language teaching, however, the teacher’s function is seen mainly as a provider of materials and conditions for learning, while the learner takes responsibility for his/ her own motivation and performance.”

Characteristics of motivated learners

Naiman et al., 1978, came to the conclusion that the most successful learners are not necessarily those to whom a language comes very easily, but those who display certain features, most of them clearly linked to motivation. Some of these characteristics are:

Positive task- orientation: the learner is willing to deal with tasks and challenges, in a self-confident way;

Ego-involvement: the learner considers that succeeding in learning helps him maintain and promote a positive self-image.

Need for achievement: the learner want to overcome difficulties and to be successful in what he/ she sets out to do;

High aspirations: the learner is ambitious and goes for high achievements;

Goal orientation: the learner directs his/her efforts towards achieving specific purposes;

Perseverance: the learner has consistency in putting up the necessary effort in studying, no matter the setbacks or frustration when failing;

Tolerance of ambiguity: the learner is not disturb when he/she finds himself/herself in a situation of blurry understanding or no understanding at all. He/ she is confident that he/she will understand latter on.

Most good teachers agree that it is their responsibility to motivate learners, and they invest a lot of time and effort in doing so. As a teacher, you have to know your students and apply the methods and techniques that work for them, and if you found a way to combine the traditional with the modern approaches, your lessons will be relevant, reliable and fun (less stress for the teacher as his/her lessons work).

According to Abraham Maslow’s theory, certain needs must be met before the brain can focus on academic achievement. His hierarchy begins with physiological needs and then proceeds to safety, belonging, esteem, and, finally, self-actualization (Maslow & Lowery, 1998). Offering choices to students (responding to their needs for power and freedom) may also make them feel good about what they are doing and therefore make them more motivated and attentive. The brain cannot focus if student’s basic needs are not met. “The classroom environment— how the teacher affects the socialization process, what the expectations are and how they are communicated, and the modeling component—can significantly influence student motivation and attention.”

It equally important to consider your students’ emotions, their likes and dislikes, their social background. Strong emotions can impede the reception of information hence creating a difficulty in coping with the lesson. Due to the fact that emotions are so powerful and triggering, to incorporate emotion into the teaching process is an excellent way to reach students and to make them engaged. If emotions organizes brain activity, and perception and attention are swayed by these states of mind, then the classroom experiences will be more memorable if teachers use emotions to reach students. The brain is always attentive to something and teachers want learning to be a first priority. Making students believe they can learn anything is in a teacher’s job description.

Harmer says in one of his books that when students feel that a teacher has little interest in them, they will have little incentive to remain motivated, but when the teacher is caring, interested, active and learning provocative, learners are much more likely to maintain an interest in what is going on and as subsequent effect, their self-esteem is likely to be nurtured. If they believe they matter, they will learn. What I have observed during my years of teaching is the willingness of students to get engaged and cooperative when their opinions counts and their interests are incorporated in the lessons. Teachers must help students grow and make them aware of the things they are good at, acknowledging their strengths and offering guidance and support in overpassing their doubts and fears.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said that “the only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.” Guide students to make the change they need to succeed!

Achieving success highly motivates students and failure turns the balance into the opposite direction. It is an important part in the art of teaching to try to ensure that students are successful, as the longer they are good at something, the more likely you keep them motivated to learn. But success cannot be attained without effort and constant work. “What students need to feel is a real sense of achievement, which has cost them something to acquire but has not bankrupted them in the process.”

Students need to make measurable progress from their starting point or from one year of study to the next one. Proof of this may be completing a syllabus, gaining confidence or passing a test. However, by the end of a school year your students want to feel that it was all worthwhile because they’ve bettered themselves. Encouragement goes hand in hand with improving English skills. Your class wants to know that you’re on its side by the praise you give the students when they do well.

Students need to believe that teachers know what they are doing. However nice teachers are, students will not follow them unless they have confidence in their professional abilities. Teachers need to have the proper attitude and posture in the classroom, and talk “students’ language”, in order to decode the information. When trust is built, students stay connected to their teacher and they are more likely to remain engaged with the lesson.

Other things which motivate students are the activities during the class. Students like to do things they enjoy or they can see the point of. Students have different interest and learning styles. While some of them like activities which involve game-like communication and other interactive tasks, others may want to sing songs and write poems, or get focused on concentrated language study and poring over reading texts. Many students have a very good visual memory and they respond to video materials very well, they are focused at the task if the guidance lines were accurate and they are active and engaged during the activities.

Teachers should keep a constant eye on what they respond well to and what they feel less engaged with. Nobody wants to have a boring experience, so students rely on the teacher to make the lessons as lively and memorable as possible. “They don’t want a standup comedian or anything too eccentric, but there should be smiling, laughing and interesting debates and talks. In this way students will not just remember that they had a lesson about words for sports, for example, but they’ll remember the story of a great athlete that you gave as the backdrop to the vocabulary. Remembering is also a big deal for people learning a language, because they need enough repetition to drive the point home but not so much that it becomes tedious.”

Motivation is different for students, from all cultures. Culture is very important in a language lesson; it’s almost impossible to teach one thing without the other. Students want a role model who can give them a bird-eye view into the English-speaking culture while showing due respect to their own. They definitely don’t want a hint of superiority from their

teacher but instead they want to know about any pitfalls in terms of appropriate behaviour and expressions.

In regard to the teaching and learning strategies, teachers need to look carefully at who the students are, where are they learning and what their aspirations are. As educators, teachers have to reflect upon what worked well during the lesson and what didn’t. The ability to reflect critically on someone’s experience and put that experience together with prior knowledge is essential to take information from immediate memory to process it in active working memory. Keep in mind that active working memory allows us to hold onto incoming information while our brains search long-term memory for patterns or connections that it recognizes. According to Williamson (1997), reflective practice may be a developmental learning process, and Wellington (1996) considers the possibility of different levels of attainment. Taking these views into consideration, teaching students about the value of reflection may be a first step toward a habit of reflection.

It seems that the biggest enemy in education is time. Teachers don’t have enough

time to cover the curriculum, to prepare for the specific tests, to give individual attention to students. They barely have time to eat lunch, go to the restroom, and check their e-mail box before classes restart. In a technological era, where files are in a computer folder at the distance of a click away, materials are organized on levels of language and skills to be taught, where archive is much easier to access you would think that we, teachers, have more time. The irony is that with this developed technology came a bigger amount of work to be done. The learning strategies are constantly changing as our students needs do as well. Since the learner is the core of the educational system, we continually think how to educate him in order to cope with the contemporary society. The flow of information is huge, everybody is connected with everybody and the tasks to be done change and multiply themselves each year.

Students motivation is vital for our lesson because motivated students equals with great classes, less stress for what doesn’t work during a lesson and more captivating topics to discuss in order to develop students’ critical thinking.

CHAPTER II

Digital technology and language learning

2.1 A review of policy and research evidence

Digital technology is already changing how we practice professional services and live our lives. Most schools – and every university and college – now have broadband access. Teachers increasingly use information and communications technology (ICT) to improve their own skills and knowledge – and to bring their lessons a pint of innovation. People working with children, students and adults are testing out new and better ways to deliver lessons/ courses with common processes supported by technology. The technology is making many administrative and assessment tasks easier, yet time consuming. Teachers need a more strategic approach to the future development of ICT in education. By doing so, they believe they can:

Transform teaching, learning and help to improve outcomes for learners, through shared ideas/ projects, more exciting lessons and online help for professionals;

Engage ‘hard to reach’ learners or the ones with special needs support, more motivating ways of learning, and more choices about how and where to learn;

Build an open accessible system, with more information and services online for parents and careers, children, young people, adult learners and employers; and more cross-organizational collaboration to improve personalized support and choice;

Achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness, with online research, access to shared ideas and lessons plans, improved systems and processes in children’s services, shared procurement and easier administration.

But first, some of the specific terms must be presented and explained in the following lines.

ICT (information and communication technology) is accepted and used as an abbreviation by everyone in education. There are people in the USA and the UK that are not really certain or precise about what the I and C stand for, linguistically or conceptually. The label used in the USA focuses exclusively on the technical medium itself (digital world), while in other countries is used as serviceable term with a more-or-less-common frame reference for all users.

In the case of foreign language learning, is more complex as the discipline generated its own subject-specific terms:

–CALL (computer-assisted language learning);

–CBLL (computer based language learning);

–CELL (computer-enhanced language learning).

The labels and their corresponding definitions remain arbitrary, transient and contingent. More than most other forms of teaching and learning, those that depend on digital technology are particularly prone to the effects of change, innovation and temporary. This thing makes more difficult for teachers “to time their assimilation of the technology effectively into their students’ learning programmes before the march of innovation has moved on and new digital challenges and opportunities present themselves to language teachers and learners”. There are effective ways in which the technology can enhance language teaching and learning aims because, as Stockwell pointed out –“many pedagogies exist as a result of technology and many technologies exist as a result of pedagogies” (2007:118).

Evidence of the impact of computer use in lessons on language –learner motivation has been intuitively accepted for a long time and overall there are evidences that learners enjoy it.

Ofsted conclude in his report on the impact of ICT, in 2004, that “one in three departments in the sample’ of schools” he visited on one year length period of time, “the impact that using ICT had on teaching and pupils’ achievement was at least good; in one in twelve it was very good”. Two main areas of positive impact were consolidation and practice through teacher use of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) or video-projectors in whole-class presentation of language and through developing students’ autonomy in language learning by completing activities such as word-processor- based redrafting exercises filled in by students individually or in collaboration through email/ groups online etc. Ofsted was worried about a negative side in all these, particularly the amount of target- language communication taking place in the languages lesson. Students and teachers don’t always know how to use all the information accurately and appropriately, and on time feedback is difficult to be given when you have a large number of students. Also lessons need to be thoroughly planned by teachers, the technological tools to function and to make the best out of what it is presented in class. Access to technology is frequents and easily done by students, but they have to focus on particular things pointed out by the teacher in order to achieve proper results, otherwise it’s just a distractor.

In Australia, in 2008, the aim of the Digital Education Revolution was to contribute sustainable and meaningful change to teaching and learning in schools that will prepare students for further education, training, jobs of the future and to live and work in a digital world. In the present, that is an education goal worldwide, and the amount of educational resources that are online and accessible to teachers and students is vast.

In England, in a review of six large-scale studies of the impact of ICT on pupil achievement, motivation and learning in schools in England, Pittard et al. (2003:3) concluded that:

generally, something positive happens to the attainment of pupils who make high use of ICT in their subject learning;

the use of ICT in class motivates students to learn;

school standards are positively associated with the quality of school ICT resources and their use in the teaching and learning process;

to achieve a positive impact of ICT on attainment, motivation and learning very much depends on the decisions of schools, teachers and students on how it is deployed and used.

In the USA, in 2007, The American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages reported on a survey, completed by 2,236 teachers, that the use of technology in their lesson continued to increase but without a dramatic extent.

Michael Evans states in his book “Foreign-Language learning with digital technology” that most of the early studies focused on learners of English as foreign language who had a working proficiency in the language. Studies on the impact of technology within educational field have registered in recent years, a growing number of meta-analyses and critical overviews on the topic within applied linguistics. The value of these studies stands in their individuality and in the themes that emerge through the analyses.

Michael Evans also says that if you apply the typology to the broader educational context, including the different domains of education, you still cannot view technology as a defining factor in alternative syllabus modes. We need to acknowledge that technology needs to be recognized as one of a range of different pedagogical and learning experiences within the classroom practice.

Classrooms around the world have video projectors, interactive whiteboards (IWB), built-in speakers for the audio materials delivered from a computer/ laptop/ mobile phone, and internet connected computers. Whenever teachers want their students to find out or to look for something, students can use a search web engine to show the results. In this way, sometimes it’s more engaging and more captivating for visual-learners and not only.

At the present time, existing research frequently highlights the use of technology as rewarding for both learners and teachers in second language learning classrooms. Yet, there are issues to consider. Although technology has become embedded in our everyday life, incorporating technology in education is a challenging endeavour.

2.2. A strategic approach to ICT

Digital technology is in an ongoing development and change, and it also changes how people do business and live their lives. Most schools – and every university and college – now have broadband access. Teachers increasingly use information and communication technology (ICT) to improve their own skills and knowledge –and to bring their lessons to life. People working with children, young people, and adults are testing out new and better ways to deliver services, with the help of technology, which can make many administrative and assessment tasks easier.

Learning a language is generally complex. Learning a second language usually happens in a situation in which direct instruction of the rules of language happens but it is obvious that formal L2 instruction is not enough because learners receive insufficient input in the target language. So as learning input is very important and numerous EFL students do not have the opportunity or the possibility to go abroad and experience exposure to real language, technology is a good tool to be used to introduce to learners “real life situations” language. In this way second language learners` exposure with the target language is provided. Video can be considered a useful challenging educational tool among technologies.

The resources that are currently available for the EFL lessons are truly amazing. The media offers an amazing variety of routes for learning and discovery, although not all classrooms in the developing and developed world have easy access to very modern technologies. Nevertheless, keep in mind that technology is an aid to a memorable lesson and not the core. Students and teachers are the engine of a class, and it is the teacher’s option whether to adopt the latest technological innovation.

The three crucial pieces of hardware to be used in a language classroom are:

a computer/ laptop;

a data projector or a wide screen TV (that connects with the computer);

speakers.

Teachers want to put up an enlarged version of the material they use for the lesson and the sound should be clear and sufficiently loud. The class will be able to see a word-processed task at the same time, or a picture, diagram/map, a song or video shots could be projected.

Presentation software increases the capacity to present visual material in a dynamic and interesting way. There are other softwares that offer a more interesting option where we can mix text and visuals with audio/ video tracks or songs. Music, speech and film can be integrated into the presentations. If it is overused it could get irksome, but there is no doubt that it allows teachers to mix different kinds of display much more effectively than before such digital tools came along.

Some studies expose the fact that students prefer technology because they believe that it makes learning more interesting and fun. They especially like laptops, tablets or smartphones. Subjects that students deem challenging or boring can become more interesting with virtual lessons, through a video, or when using a gadget. Many students indicated that using technology in the classroom would help them prepare for the digital future as education is about solving complex problems and learners building collaborative skills to shape up strong teams that would contribute to the success of the organization.

The impact that technology has had on today’s schools has been quite significant. This widespread adoption of technology has completely changed how teachers teach and students learn. Teachers are learning how to teach with emerging technologies (tablets, iPads, Smart Boards, digital cameras, computers), while students are using advanced technology to shape how they learn. By embracing and integrating technology in the classroom, we are setting our students up for a successful life outside of school.

2.3. Beliefs about digital technologies and their potential

Traditionally, language teachers may focus on word (improving vocabulary) and sentence (syntax and grammar) work and view text work as an outcome of the first two. The National Languages Strategy in England aims to put text level work on an equal footing with word and sentence practice. Professionals have highlighted the importance of the development of cultural awareness of the societies where the language is used.

The use of authentic texts and audio materials in the EFL classes used to be viewed as problematic due to the lack of easy and up-to-date access to such materials, limiting their use and effectiveness. The development of the internet has led to immediate access to resources for teachers and language learners. The availability to authentic texts, audio and visual files/ materials became vast and learners seem to be very stimulated. The lexis and structures is far beyond what has been encountered until a decade ago, and the subject matter may relate to a culture of which the learner has little or no experience. Authentic texts available on the internet illustrate how technology can be used to assist in language learning. Unfortunately, the pressures of time can lead languages teachers to focus mainly on the development of reading and listening skills as they relate to assessment criteria of the examination system, although it is highly important to develop learners’ confidence in facing the unpredictable challenge of the original and the awareness of the cultures where this language is the main means of communication and expression.

Despite the fact that it is a requirement to incorporate ICT into classroom teaching, changing the pedagogical practice of teachers is not easy. It has been researched that change is non-linear (simply providing access to technology does not ensure its use), is complex and needs to be rooted in support structures that are embedded within teachers’ social and working contexts. As for the experienced modern language teachers, they have established aspects of their identity as successful practitioner with certain and specific pedagogic approaches. In order to accept the use of ICT in their lesson and make it an efficient act, teachers need to be open-minded and skillful as to turn it into a pedagogical tool.

The reluctance of using the digital technology in the EFL classes came from teachers’ “fright” of a tool they don’t master (YET!). At first, they were afraid to use these tools, as they didn’t “grow up” with these media devices as their students did and do. The sources of these fears could be:

lack of confidence;

lack of training in using digital technology;

doubts about the value of ICT in the classroom;

lack of accurate planning;

problems with technology in itself (the internet doesn’t work properly, the computer could crash, the files could be lost, lack of electric power, mismatch of computer and video-projector, etc);

the belief that ICT is removing the possibility of children’s active involvement in the lesson (the use of technology requires them to sit passively instead of engaging with learning activities);

lack of facilities;

lack of digitally skilled students;

a big amount of research work for teacher to prepare ICT lessons properly and usefully;

lack of support from the school boards;

financial issues.

Andrew Goodwyn stated in his book “English in the digital age” (2004) that ICT “enables us to explore the significant and the signifying in powerful new ways”. He also makes a type of analogy of the British writer, Alfred Tennyson, with the contemporary teacher. In his time, he was preoccupied of the 'British' nation which was considering its empire building and industrial and technological future. Tennyson wrote:

And slowly answer'd Arthur from the barge:

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new',

And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

(Tennyson, 'The Idylls of the King',

The Passing of Arthur, 1.407)

These lines captures the dilemma for many educators at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They are in between the print literature generation and the new generations concerned, they feel, with electronic media of all kinds.

“I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.”

(Tennyson, 'Ulysses', 1834)

Tennyson's lines seem to have been written nowadays: for a child facing a computer screen or a smart phone is like he is about to set off on a voyage across the Internet, the screen can be an arch of huge significance. Tennyson's Ulysses refuses to rest. He chooses 'To follow knowledge like a sinking star/ Beyond the utmost bound of human thought'; he is determined to remain 'A bringer of new things'. “That strikes me as a wonderful motto for English teachers, tempted perhaps by the safe harbour of literature but for whom a 'newer world' offers new possibilities.”

One of outmost importance tasks faced by today’s world is that of bridging the “new” mindset of digital insiders and the “old” mindset on which models of education are still based. Technology has an important place within students’ lives. When they are not in school, many things they do are connected in some way to technology. By integrating technology into their lessons, teachers are changing the way they used to teach and providing students with the tools they need for the 21st century.

Using authentic texts and video materials from the internet, English teachers can exploit news websites and commercial websites to practice vocabulary and communication, exploit websites specifically for children or adults to practice real life situation, exploit cultural authentic sites for culture lessons, exploit grammar sites for grammar drills. Teachers can develop strategies and techniques:

– to improve students’ reading skills,

– to shape up a critical thinking ability for students,

– to get students interact in groups more easily,

– to improve listening skills, etc.

– to engage them in topics appealing for them;

– to encourage them to speak in English about things they like, they enjoy, in a less stressful environment.

Effective technology integration for teaching specific content or specific topic requires a mutual understanding and negotiating between three important components: technology, pedagogy and content. Teachers that are able to obtain this mix efficiently have a higher expertise in these fields than average. Krumsvik underpins teachers’ double role when they are to focus on education and instruction with ICT, and to perform as role models when teaching ICT within the subjects.

2.4. Using Video in the EFL classes

Ben Goldstein presents in one of his articles a brief history of video in ELT, starting with the BBC video crash course “Follow Me”, from the late 70s, where the emphasis was on showing functional language context. The sketches were used as models for learners’ own output. Then in the 80s and 90s, the new concept of Communicative Approach was in the spotlight and the “active viewing” came in. The emphasis was on interface and teachers began to insert subtitles, freeze frame images and they could even remove sound. Students engage in more active roles, yet the most common task type was listening comprehension. Video materials were used as an extra activity, more rarely, and it was purchased in order to alleviate the coursebook and its grammar syllabus, as a form of light entertainment. The author of the article states that this fact coincided with the fun element of many CLT coursebooks with the emphasis on games, songs and self-enjoyment of the student. In the 90s, the “Speak Up” magazine/ video package showed up as a response to the need of authentic materials suitable for teaching and accessible to learners.

A number of questions emerged from the situation:

1) how much should it be done? (adaption of authentic material)

2) how advisable is it to use them? (use of subtitles/ transcripts)

3) what’s the ideal time sequence when presenting a video in class? (length of video sequences)

As a result, coursebooks began to integrate video, often incorporating shorter vox-pop sequences or documentary-style/ news-based clips. Teachers could show these materials with or without subtitles depending on their targeted skill, with the help of the coursebook tools. Publishers settled deals with media groups (such as National Geographic, Ted Talks later on) in an attempt to introduce authentic material seamlessly into the class content.

In the present day, the use of video for language focus or skills practice is now being challenged as is the conventional task order of Before /While / After You Watch. Video is now commonly seen as a Stimulus – as a springboard to other tasks, such as discussion or project work. Likewise, video materials are being exploited increasingly for their visual qualities with learners not having to worry about comprehension issues. This means that the same video sequence can be used for different levels. Instead of grading the input, you grade the task.

The fourth and final use of video that the talk explorers, is video as resource and the changing status of digital video. Current estimates suggested that most of the internet traffic would be video-based in the near future. What are the implications for classroom shapes? Video classes already supplement F2F classrooms in Blended Learning programs. In the Flipped Classroom scenario, input is provided on video and watched by learners online, allowing for more a more F2F classroom interaction and changing the roles of the teacher / learner relationship in the process. The movement then is clearly from Video Exploitation with the teacher guiding the class to video creation with the learner taking on a more active role. “This movement echoes the blurring that exists in the digital age between author and audience. It is also symptomatic of the evolving nature of literacies, with a movement from Convention to Critique to (Re-) Design”.

Rather than our learners following a model or merely criticizing that model, they can now design their own material and thus contribute to their own meanings. In the case of video, new genres and hybrids are being created as a result of these changes – remixes, mash-ups, etc. This is the future of video materials in the classroom – the learners providing the input themselves – designing, scripting, recording and transmitting it in any way they see fit. As Stephen Apkon says: “There is no better way to critically appraise the message of others than to speak one’s own message”. On Vimeo it is a short video in this matter, how a learner/ person can create his own input in regard to his own interests and likes.

Scrivner says in his book “Learning Teaching”, that a teacher should take into consideration some basic guidelines while playing video materials during the lesson:

to keep it short;

to exploit the material;

to switch it off when the students don’t look at it (a fuzzy, buzzing device can become a distractor);

not to use only video chunks to extract language for study, but to use them as starting points for communicative activities, for writing or introducing new topics.

Video should be used as another tool in the teaching process. A creative teacher can design many learning activities out of a few minutes video sequence. When a teacher wants to exploit video recordings, he should consider its purpose and language production. A video has sounds and moving images, has “pause” and “back/ forward” options that can help students replay that piece of material, or pause to make assumptions for what happens next or go back to pay more attention to some expressions and deduct the meaning and so on. You can be accurately jumped to a specific moment that requires more focus, or you can replay small sections with precision, you can show/ hide subtitles on screen, or isolate a sound cue or play music, watch a film scene and compare with the book, you can even rewrite it, if options are available. On the website ISL Collective such options are posible for any chosen video by the user.

Some recently published coursebooks have DVDs attached to them, in order to provide supplementary materials for students research, isolated sound cues and music available and also video shots for each unit from the student’s book to enable learners to see the “full picture” and to engage them in active and interesting communicative activities.

Using video and DVD during the EFL classes

The video activities can be devided in 3 general categories:

Before watching: what you do before you watch a section of recording;

While-watching: what you do while you watch;

After watching: exercises to be done after viewing.

Before watching/ Previewing – some specific drills:

A language focus on lexis, function and grammar that will come up on the recording;

Students predict what will happen from some given information or pictures;

Students discuss a topic that leads into or is connected with the subject from the video sequence;

Students study a worksheet that they will use when watching the recording.

The previous lesson could also constitute in itself a preview task, leading to the video material to be watched. If a particular function is being studied, the students might already have spent a lesson or two working with it and now view the recording to expand their knowledge of it, or they had a vocabulary lesson on a specific topic and the video sequence can help them practice their speaking skills/ assess the previous vocabulary/ better understanding of the meaning , etc.

Sample exercise, Close-Up C1 Student Book, pg.16, Unit 1

While watching

A clear viewing tasks should be set for the English lessons in order to help the student get the most of the video. The task-audio and watching- feedback circle still works well as a basic procedure for this type of activity. Task might be in the form of oral instructions/ worksheet/ checking previously made predictions, or they might be a natural follow-up from the previous activities. Teachers may want to replay the recording through many times with harder tasks. Tasks can be listening, looking or intrepreting. The answers to many of the questions will involve active interpretation of the visuals as well as the audio information. “Focusing on gestures, facial expressions, body language, etc. is especially useful when studying functional language.”

Sample exercise, Close-Up C1 Student Book, pg.16, Unit 1

After watching – some specific exercises:

Discussion, interpretation, personalisation (“would you like to be a skydriver?” or “what can go wrong?”, “do you think it worths the risk?”etc.)

New language study;

Inspiration for a future project or other work;

Role-playing, imagining a particular scenario;

Writing tasks (letter of recommendation, article, story, etc.)

Imagine a different ending.

Sample exercises, Close-Up C1 Student Book, pg.16, Unit 1

Video materials can be used in different ways in the EFL classes. Teachers should be willing to use them during lessons but in the same time they must be aware of the fact that they cannot plonk students down in front of a screen and expect the programs to do the job. As a tool, video should be mastered by the teacher according to the needs of the class. He needs to make sure that he knows how to exploit it in order to be fun, entertaining and learning efficient. The purpose of the visual material is to serve the stuying process and not to entertain the students. Ideally is to blend them together. Previous preparation is vital. The teacher has to take time before the lesson to thouroughly set all up, to be prepared for a machinery failure and have a backup. I once had a lesson with video support and there was a power break. The key is not to panic. I improvised and used the backup handouts. The lesson was successful due to previous planning.

Aims and objectives

Teachers should think very carefully before starting a plan, designing a pattern.

The aims should be clear and concise and to show what the teacher wants to achieve, like:

To improve the students’ ability to communicate effectively in formal/ informal written or spoken English;

To develop an understanding and appreciation of the world’s cultures/ grammatical structures/ words meaning, etc;

To create opportunities for students to engage in creative self-expression/ creative projects/ interactions/ role-plays;

To develop students’ listening/ speaking/ communication skills;

To engage students in talking about specific subjects, in a stress free environment.

‟Aims may point you in the right direction, but they don’t tell you how to get there, or when you have arrived. So intentions must be described in a more detailed way with what are variously called ‘specific objectives’, ‘behaviourist objectives’, ‘competencies’ and/or ‘specific learning outcomes’”. If the teacher knows precisely what students should be able to do, it is much easier to assess whether or not they can do it. This enables him/ her to evaluate how successful his/her lessons have been. The crucial point is that the outcomes precisely describe observable learner performance, shifting the focus on to what the students will be able to do as a result of their learning, and away from what the teacher will do. For example:

Some teachers find writing objectives sometimes difficult, but if they are focused on what the students should be able to do, the task becomes clear and effective. Bloom’s “Taxonomy of Educational objectives” divides them into three main domains:

Cognitive (to state; recall; recognise; describe; explain; identify; illustrate; apply; use; select; differentiate; summarize; etc.)

Affective (to listen; appreciate; recognize; believe; etc.)

Psychomotor ( to draw; to mix; to sketch; etc)

If the teacher considers these point, his planning will be efficient and his lesson productive.

The use of technology in the classroom does not replace using traditional materials. Technology tools are used to complement and enhance regular classroom work. The teacher can produce additional electronic materials to review coursebook material on the topic, independently. For many learning purposes, visual information is more effective. Getting students to summarise their understanding in a visual way and then to check this is a great way to learn.

2.5 Approaches, methods and techniques used in video lessons

In “The Practice of English Language Teaching”, Jeremy Harmer explains the differences between the above terms. He defines them as it follows:

The use and mis-use of these terms can make discussions of comparative methodology somewhat confusing, but what the interested teacher needs to do when he is confronted with a new method, or a new technique, is to see if and how it incorporates theories of language and learning.

Grammar-translation, Direct Method and Audiolingualism

Before the nineteenth century, scholars used to consult lists of foreign languages in dictionaries. Now, with the development of technology, students can access dictionaries online from computers or smartphones. It’s time saving and accurate as well.

The Direct method was a reform movement as reaction to the restrictions of Grammar-translation. The teacher and students could interact by relating the grammatical forms they were studying to objects and pictures, to establish meaning easier. In the 20th century, due to travelling possibilities world wide, this method morphed into the Audiolingual method. It would use stimulus-response-reinforcement models to engender good habits in language learners. With the help of the video materials, the objects can be put on a screen, accompanied by sound or other important details. Repetition of words/ lines is facilitated due to video projectors and speakers in the classroom and it can be replayed and worked with at students’ own pace.

Presentation, Practice, Production- is another method grew out of structural-situational teaching whose main departure from Audiolingualism was to place the language in clear situational contexts. Students now practise the language by using repetitions, cue response drills, substitution exercises. The teacher can present an image on the whiteboard/ screen of a picture and ask question about it. Students elicit answers, can develop the action further on, can describe a completely different situation, can use specific vocabulary or practise chunks of language.

Ex: The teacher points to one of the picture from the image above and plays a sound. The student has to express the verb whose action is described by the sound. Them they write on the board sentences that describe one of the pictures. Students practice specific language sequence (verbs to describe actions: taking photos, visiting the museum, painting etc., or they could practice past continuous/ past simple- ex: We were taking photos at 3 o’clock yesterday / We went on a school trip a week ago and we took photos of those places). After this practice, they are able to produce their own sentences, using specific vocabulary/ grammatical structure.

The teacher can also present a short video of approximately 2 minutes where 2 teenagers are doing some shopping. The teacher can practice specific vocabulary with the students. They can make shopping lists, clothes descriptions, creative writings etc. They can imagine a follow up story for the next lesson and develop writing and speaking abilities.

Printscreen of a video sequence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_EwuVHDb5U)

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)

This method means different things to different people. It’s like an extended family of different approaches. It doesn’t concentrate solely on grammar but on communicative functions people perform with language and other notions of it. Students are involved in meaning-focused communicative tasks, and they have vast exposure to language and plenty opportunities to use it. Activities in CLT typically involve students in real/ realistic communication, where the successful achievement of the communicative task they are performing is at least as important as the accuracy of their language use. Role-play, debates and simulation are very popular drills. CLT “has become a generalised ‘umbrella’ term to describe learning sequences which aim to improve the students’ ability to communicate.”

It has sometimes been seen as a method on the pursuit of fluency rather than students’ accuracy.

As a teacher, I used this method during EFL classes, involving technology as well. For example, I wanted to teach my students vocabulary related to extreme sports, and I wanted to make them talk, in pairs/ groups about them. First I pre-taught the vocabulary and solved some thematic exercises, then I presented them a video about bungee-jumping, skurfing, windsurfing, free-diving, paddleboarding, white-water rafting, etc. After the video, I split the students in 2 groups: each group had an equal number of students to the number of extreme sports presented in the video. Each students was given a card with the name of the sport they practice, and they had to make a speech in order to convince the other members from the group that his sport is the most exciting and challenging and rewarding. Clues for the arguments were presented in the video sequence. It was a role-play exercise. Other students were chosen to be the judges, and to expose reasons for their choice of the winners.

Teacher talking time was reduced to the minimum and students talking time was bigger than for an average exercise. The material was authentic and engaging for the learners. Students had fun, they were creative and spoke in English in a stress free environment.

Printscreen of a video sequence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qEbjw_I0-o)

Task based learning (TBL)

This method makes the performance of meaningful tasks central to the learning process. Students are presented with a task they have to perform or a problem they have to solve. This type of approach requires a Pre-task stage (the teacher introduces the topic and may highlight useful words and phrases), a During the Task cycle stage, when students perform the task in pairs/ groups and the teacher monitors the activity and a Language focus stage –students examine and discuss specific features of any listening exercise or reading text they have worked on.

I worked with my classes this type of exercises frequently, using video materials during the lesson. An example of such a drill:

Situation – A woman is talking to her husband about her day at work.

The lexical approach – Michael Lewis says that this approach is based on the assertion that “language consists not of traditional grammar and vocabulary, but often of multi-word prefabricated chunks”(1997:3).

What I used with my students for this matter, was the British council Kids site, where they have uploaded video lexical games. These are fun, engaging and activate students prior vocabulary, whilst acquiring new words as well.

VIDEO TEACHING TECHNIQUES

Freeze Frame- the video is used like a picture dictionary. The teacher presses the Pause button on the video sequence, and the image on the screen “freezes”. He can pause to ask questions about what students see (vocabulary lists), describing scenes/ people, making inferences about the characters’ habits/ economic or social status from their clothing or physical shape, etc. The “magic” of the video is that the characters move and speak.

I used this technique just at the point when a character is about to respond to a question, at a crucial moment when he/she must make a statement or reaction, or when the character has an interesting facial expression. I used it for reported speech once. I played a video recording from TED Talks, where a former girl model from the fashion industry held a speech about her image on the covers of magazines and her real self. I paused and I asked students to retell her story up to that point.

It is useful also for pronunciation and grammar practice. You can stop the video material when a character has used an intonation pattern, a grammatical structure or idioms that students need to practice. The utterance can be replayed and repeated as often as needed.

Below I present examples of activities, using this technique:

Students find these type of exercises engaging and pleasant. The downside of them is the lack of time dedicated to this type of activities, due to syllabus planning. But nevertheless, creative students and creative teacher find the opportunities to make them possible and insert them in the planning in order to achieve a good lesson.

Silent Viewing- a video clip is played, without the sound. The teacher asks the students questions about what they saw, he/she asks them to try to tell the story to the class or to each other, in pairs or in groups, and he/she prepares questions for them to answer about the clip guessing the meaning, etc. Then the video is played again with sound and students check their answers.

Students attain much information visually. They can make judgements about a person’s age, physical appearance, economic status, a person’s mood and behaviour. They can recognize the time of the day or the season. When two people are talking, students can infer a lot about their relationship and personalities from their body language. If small details are observed, through video close-ups, we can find out additional information: if he’s rich or poor, whether the person is married or in search of a relationship, if he’s relaxed or nervous, if he’s clean or dirty, etc. All this information is readily available for class discussion.

For very young learners, this techniques is useful for playing video games, where they have to recognize the item and pronounce the correct words (guessing games), or to sing a song previously learned by simply watching the clip.

Video scenes usually present many unsubtle clues to their content. By watching a scene with the sound off, students gain two major benefits:

Time in which to absorb the content of a sequence without the anxiety of having to understand the language;

A chance to fit the language that they hear on a second viewing into a context. By this, their level of comprehension in the second viewing is superior to that of a first viewing that includes both sound and picture.

This type of exercise is very engaging and stimulates speaking and writing: students want to communicate their interpretations/ opinions of the people and actions they have seen on the screen.

Prediction Technique- a clip is ongoing and it is stopped at a certain point in the clip. The teacher asks the students to predict what will come next. Students can work individually, in pairs or in groups and they share ideas with a partner after thinking first on their own and then offer their best idea to the class.

Listening without viewing Technique – The teacher turns the image off and has students listen to a clip. He/ she uses focused listening techniques and asks students to listen for specific information. The learners can be asked to fill in a chart with information gleaned from the listening.

This technique is also known as Sound Only technique, involving listening for aural clues to the action. Sounds effects may be included. It’s like a listening exercise, but with the major advantage that students can positively confirm their guesses immediately upon viewing.

After listening to the audio material, students make predictions about what is happening. Who and where the people are and what are they doing. They can also describe a character by listening to his/her voice. The teacher may use this type of practice if he wants students to pay particular attention to a small piece of dialogue, while avoiding the distraction of the activity on the screen.

Listening activities are of utmost importance in an EFL class, as they provide a valuable and necessary language input and students can learn and hear the English words from natives. The aim of a listening exercise is for students to understand most of the information presented to be able to do the tasks. This is how they become more confident when they hear spoken English. The advantage of having the video input as well is that they can check their understanding and see if their predictions were correct.

Back-to-Back Technique- based on the idea that pair partners know, each of them, different but incomplete versions of a story. In order to recreate the original story, they need to share their information. Video input helps with the sound and visuals and it adapts quite easily to the task.

The classic mode of “Jigsaw Viewing” requires the ability to have 2 rooms for simultaneous tasks, or one room but the two teams enter the room one after the other, which requests more time span. One team member is retelling the story he sees (without sound) while the other team member is with his back to the screen, then they switch places and after that they reconstruct the whole happening.