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英语影视教学-Teaching and Learning English Through Vide(2)

2013-09-15 01:30

4. Some points worthy of attention in teaching through videos
4.1 The teacher’s role and requirement
In order to have an efficient video class, we should well know the teacher’s role first. Because whether the students can achieve a good memory and high efficiency of what they have learned depends on the scientific design and careful implementation, without them the gain cannot be satisfactorily obtained. The teacher is an organizer, controller, participant, facilitator and evaluators as well as researcher or investigator, he /she plays a very important role in video class. [15] So the teacher’s main responsibility is to design tasks that can be carried out in class. Before the activity the teacher should give instruction clearly and concisely. In order to make the activity run smoothly and efficiently, the teacher also has to control the pace. During the role-play, the teacher can join one or two groups as an ordinary participant. As far as the video is concerned the teacher should help students by designing handouts and guiding them to watch. “According to Harmer (1997:237), as an assessor or evaluator, the teacher does two things that are correcting mistakes and organizing feedback. Harmer insists that correcting should be gentle.”, “Organizing feedback is an effective way to assess student’s performances so that they see how well they are doing.” [16] Here the teacher should focus on student’s success or progress so that a success-oriented learning atmosphere can be created. What’s more, surveys and interviews are indispensable steps for the teacher. Through the research or investigation, the teacher can get to know the perception of his /her students about videos, what activities they like much and what videos are their favorites. Then the teacher will adopt the material and teaching method according to the need and interests of students. By these ways his/her teaching will be more motivating and effective.
In a word, in video course teacher’s role is not only on playing the films but also on transmitting this material in to students’ real acquired experience. 内容来自www.nseac.com
4.2 Criteria for video option
Films are available on VCD, DVD, tape, disc or TV. There are also many kinds of films, comedy, tragedy, science fiction, thriller, documentary, etc. Although there are various kinds of video materials, few can be adopted as teaching and learning material in a video course, and what kind of films is suitable for a video course is the key question for teachers. Selecting a suitable film is very important for a teacher to organize a good class, teachers should be careful in choosing films to use in video courses. Teachers should apply different methods to design some activities in different types of films. For example, documentaries often include large information such as news, commentary, and the development of them is always based on an event. When watching this kind of film, the teacher should lead students’ attention on what, who, where, when, how, why questions on the film. [17]
The video materials’ selection is significant in English teaching and learning, but the same material cannot meet the whole students’ need. What’s more, they are in different levels and abilities. Look at following table:  
               The Students’ Perceptions of the Selection of Films [18]
Items A B C D E
1 28.67% 8.29% 15% 28.71% 18.33%
2 11.25% 18.85% 28.75% 5% 37.15%
3 5% 18.75% 37.5% 5% 27.5%
4 0% 5% 42.64% 33.62% 18.7%
5 2.5% 11.25% 13.75% 60% 12.5%
6 3.75% 38.93% 38.57% 10% 8.75%
(See Appendix1 for the wording of the items)
Item1 in table displays the learners’ perceptions or opinions of the selection of films. Nearly 30% learners like films about love; also nearly 30% learners like watching videos about life. Only nearly 9% learners like watching videos about war. This indicates that most learners love life and treasure the most beautiful affection. When they watch videos, they want to be in a relaxing stage. Item2 in table show that nearly 40% of learners prefer that the film be connected with what they have learned. It suggests that the learners want to decode the plots using their existing knowledge and prior experience. It also illustrates nearly 30% of learners like to watch films that are thought provoking. This indicates that students like thinking about life, the theme and value of viewers’ thinking and imagination. Item3 in table shows that nearly 40% learners prefer the ideological content within their understanding. As is shows in Item4 in table, 42.64% learners prefer that the selection of films should be of variety. This maybe shows that learners want to enrich their knowledge since authentic materials are clear and essential source and an important trigger of comprehensible output as well. As is illustrated in Item5 in table, 60% learners prefer videos/films a little above their linguistic competence. If a video is too difficult or easy, then the language acquisition will not occur spontaneously.

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From the above analyses we can get some principles of selecting a suitable film for teaching and learning. First, films chosen for video course should be based on the students’ interests and also helpful for learning and teaching rather than entertainment. They must be good for teaching purpose, for example, to provide an opportunity for students to improve their listening or speaking ability. If students are especially weak in picking up daily conversations, it is better that the film should include enough dialogues. In addition, the film shouldn’t be too easy or too hard for students according to students’ different levels of proficiency of English. If the film is too easy, the advanced students can benefit little from it. On the contrary, the elementary students will probably lose interest in it if the film is too difficult to understand. Last but not least, young people can be easily influenced by movies. The films worldwide are both good and bad, so teachers should consider the ideological content of films. Teachers should be patient and careful enough to choose films. If the film is consisted of violence or sex, etc, it is a bad source for teaching and learning.
4.3 Time arrangement
Another problem for teachers is time arrangement. As for the duration of the video, Item6 in table shows that “the length of a video should be between one and half hours and two hours. It will appear to students’ psychological characteristics as far as their span of attention is concerned.”[19] Normally, it takes 2 to 3 hours to finish playing a whole film, so we need at least 4-class time (45 minutes per class). However, as we have many activities designed to conduct during each stage, it is essential to arrange time as reasonable as possible. It requires teachers’ full preparation before video course and puts time arrangement into consideration. In addition, a film is divided into several class-times to finish, so when it is to be continued, students should memorize the scene of the film played in previous classes. Therefore, how to properly arrange time not only depends on the performance of students and teachers, but also depends on how much time the film takes. In this perspective of time, we’d better not choose those films which take too long to finish.

5. Some methods and activities to be used in video course

The book English Through Movies intends to help learners go through the journey of learning English through movies in 4 stages. It has 4 units. Each unit is a movie. There are 4 parts in every unit. Part one: understanding of the movie, which includes the cultural background of the movie, the genre of the movie and the summary of the movie. Part two: close study of the movie, which contains excerpts from the movie. Part three: reflection of the movie, which includes recordings of interview. Part four: act out the movie. [20] Learning from the design of this book, we know something must be done before we start a video course. On one hand, we can conduct a questionnaire to know students’ specific needs. Questions can be raised in the questionnaire like this: Do they really like watching a movie in class? If they do, in what ways can it motivate students? On the other hand, teachers should check up whether the teaching facilities are available or not. A film class needs certain facilities like a TV set, a videocassette recorder (VCR) or a videodisc player, videotapes or discs. Now, it is time to consider how to fully use films to teach. There are three stages for preparing and teaching a video course.
5.1 Pre-watching [21]
The first stage is preparation. Both teachers and students should well prepare. For the part of teachers, all the equipments and other facilities should be checked to be in a good state. Teachers also need to get all the teaching materials (the textbook, pictures, or poster etc.) prepared to help students get to know anything about the movie. Then teachers can design some exercises to be presented and activities to be worked out in class. As for students, they should read the reference materials or they can look for other related materials to understand the film better.
Pre-watching activities:
If the students have already known something about the film, they will not be so tense, so activities also should not be neglected in pre-watching stage. They can be designed as following:
(1) Introduce the topic and cultural background of the video.
(2) Vocabulary guessing: Give students a list of words and let them guess which word will be appeared in what context. If there are some words they don’t know, ask them to look up in a dictionary immediately or turn to the teacher for help.
(3) Set one or two general questions to meet the main content points in the film.
(4) Discussion: Discuss what the film will be about according to the title of the film.
These activities serve as a warming-up exercise before watching the movie. It is a good previewing activity for different levels of students in class, and it aims to help students have a better understanding of the film.
5.2 While-watching [22]
The second stage is watching the film. When students have a basic idea of the film, it is time to view the movie. The film can be played twice or more to strengthen their impression of the movie. Students watch the film straight through at the first time to strengthen their understanding from their preparation. The second time, teachers only choose certain episode of the film. During this process, teachers can suddenly stop and ask students to do the exercise given in advance. As for the third time or more, students can completely appreciate the film without any exercises.
While-watching activities: (the first time)
(1) Gap-filling.
Provide some key sentences and paragraphs based on the video with blanks. This exercise requires students remember key words, slang, phrases or important information to fill the gaps. This activity can be easy for some advanced students. However, it can help those elementary and intermediate students to practice their spoken English.
(2) Multiple-choice
List words with four explanations. Among these explanations, certain or all could be possible for answers. Students are asked to choose those, which are fit to the meaning appears in the video.
(3) True or false
Give students worksheets with some statements. Ask students to decide whether it is true or false according to the film (with information available in the video).

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(4) Check the answers and give explanations as well.
In these activities, students are given a worksheet while viewing at the first time. This activity needs a little writing, so the film will not be interrupted.
While-watching activities: (the second time)
(1) Complete a sentence or a paragraph dictation.
When it comes to a sentence dictation, teachers play the disc twice. For the first time, students are asked to watch only. When playing the second time, students must write down what they have heard to complete the whole sentence. When it comes to a paragraph dictation, teachers play the video three times. For the first time, students must watch and listen only to get the general idea. For the second time, students take down the notes. The last time, students must write down the whole paragraph as much as possible based on the notes they’ve taken.
(2) Sound off
Play the video through once with the sound turned off. Ask students to watch the screen only to predict the verbal content of the film. This prediction may include who the characters are, what they are talking about, etc. [23]
(3) Play the video again and check the answers.
In these activities, teachers just choose a part of the film (3 to 4 minutes) and present it to the class. The purpose of a sentence or a paragraph is to help students focus on key words and phrases. It is particularly effective with both elementary and intermediate students. And the sound off exercise is to help students to use extra linguistic clues to understand what is being said.
5.3 Post-watching [24]
The final stage is the advanced stage. To have a comprehensive review of the advanced students, teachers must adopt various methods.
Post-watching activities:
(1) Group discussion
Students are divided into 4 or 5 groups, and then each group selects one leader to present their group members’ idea after discussion. Each group is given different tasks (such as the summary of the story, the comments on the film, the performance of the characters, etc). When the discussion is over, every representative of each group is asked to share and exchange their ideas to the whole class.

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(2) Role playing
When students have a clear understanding of the presentation, teachers select certain part of the scene, and ask students to act out in front of class by using as much of the original version as they can remember.
(3) Writing
Ask students to write a short summary or comments on any issues or characters they like in the film. These activities aim to check whether students have understood the film and also provide feedbacks to teachers. From this stage, teachers can see where still needs to be improved.

6. Conclusion
English teaching and learning through films has both positive and negative parts, in terms of providing material source. Compared to other media, it’s ultimately good for conducting classroom activity, practicing students’ speaking and listening ability, etc. Even though there are also many methods proved to be efficient for English teaching and learning, videos are still worth trying to put into teaching practice. Apart from its advantages introduced above, video itself has its own characteristics, which combine nature and society, culture and history, science and art, religion and morality, dream and reality. Although its advantages outweigh its disadvantages, we still should be aware of its limitations during teaching. We also have suggested some activities in each stage, it is obvious that activities aim to help students have a better understanding of the film; however, they still need to be improved as more and more video courses are put into practice. The video class makes language teaching more attractive and interesting, and it requires both the effort of teachers and students.

Bibliography:
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[23] 同[11] P42
[24] 同[11] P40

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