Do You Really Use Youtube in Your EFL Classes? How?
Do you use You Tube in Your EFL classes? How?
Absolutely!
Like so many other English teachers, I begin teaching with student interests and habits in mind. Of course, I also want to take them from the old and familiar to new and unfamiliar while improving their English language skills. You Tube remains a powerful classroom tool to achieve that goal.
I’ve used YouTube to have students research job interview tips, stress patterns, pronunciation problems, and informational interviews. The results have been consistently positive as I have students write concise video reviews and email me their reviews for homework before the next class.
Then I slightly edit the reviews, watch the videos and add my own comments in blue ink, and combine the reviews into a single document that is emailed to all class members. “Use or lose” I say, but here are the reviews from your classmates. Result: almost every student watches every video recommended and spending far more time on the topic than I could allocate in class. It’s both popular and quite effective.
As English teachers, we are truly blessed to be working in the YouTube era.
Ask more. Know more. Share more. Speak more.
Create Compelling Conversations.
Visit www.CompellingConversations.com
Absolutely!
I remember once having “entrepreneurship” as a theme in the textbook. The book featured Richard Branson, who obviously, is only “cool” in the UK and few had heard of him in our lesson in Germany.
I told the students they could investigate RB and bring in whatever they learned, whether it was wikipedia, podcasts, videos, articles, FB, blogs – anything at all – their choice.
I had some amazing results and learned a lot – but sticking to this theme – one of the students found an interview, and then another and then another – in total she watched 4 videos!
She came into the next class with much to share. She was so motivated and very proud of the vocabulary she’d noticed and then looked up to ‘teach’ the rest of us.
If I’d asked her to do an hour+ of homework, I’d probably have had whining students but because I let them choose – even through “youtube” – they did way more than requested and learned more than I could have taught.
Karenne
In my classes, I use famous songs on you tube as a listening exercise. The cool thing about it is that there’s usually the original and then all these variations of it from different accents from people all over the world. We listen to maybe 3 variations and discuss which is the easiest to understand, etc…nice for comparison and sometimes the students disagree with each other about which version they like best!
Your classes sound like fun – and grounded in a realistic appreciation for accents and perceptions from across the globe.
Thanks for sharing your best classroom practices!