I am very happy to have Heather Torrie as a guest blogger. She has so many great ideas and resources to share. Here she is!
Almost two years ago, I started teaching full time in a brand-new intensive English program. We didn’t have many resources to start with, especially for listening. I went online and rediscovered the vast wealth of authentic listening material. Since then, I’ve been implementing a series of student-created listening activities based on online videos.
We usually have some kind of theme in my listening classes, such as technology, business, or dating. Based on the current theme, I have my students find a video of interest to them and create a set of questions for their classmates to answer. For my beginning listening class, I have them simply produce five questions, but for more advanced students, I will require a set of main idea questions, detail questions, inference questions, and critical thinking questions. Sometimes, I have them identify new vocabulary and create a question for each word. Then, I have them post their entire activity to our Blackboard discussion for the class to access. I usually do this in class, during our lab time, but you could also have students do this as a homework assignment.
Another type of activity I do using these online videos is to simply have my students write or orally record a summary and reaction to the video clip. This helps them develop their critical thinking skills. After they initially post their message/audio file, I make it more interactive by requiring them to listen and respond to their classmates’ postings. This works well for listening, speaking, and writing classes. A short three-minute video can be a great writing or speaking prompt.
Here are some websites that I use quite regularly and contain a lot of short 3-5 minute segments. This is of course in addition to Youtube. Sometimes I like these sites better simply because I don’t need to sift through so much.
Online Video Resources:
News and Information
Automobiles Sites
Stories
Jobs and Careers
Food and Cooking
Sources for Photos:
News. Accessed March 14, 2009 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:News.png.
Car. Accessed March 14, 2009 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CJ1A.JPG.
Guillon. Old Book — Les Miserable. Accessed March 14, 2009 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_book_-_Les_Miserables.jpg.
Employment. Accessed March 14, 2009 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Employment.jpg.
linan08s27. MaLaTang. Accessed March 14, 2009 from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MaLaTang.JPG.
