Using VIDEO to Teach GRAMMAR

Although video has been around for a long time in the world of ELT, it is only in the past few years that it has really managed to be used the way it was meant to be in the classroom. For years, teachers would take a dvd or cd they had watched on the weekend, and show it to their students as a treat, or if they were feeling short of things to do, use it to fill in time. That approach to video has changed though through websites like youtube and vimeo with an extraordinary amount of material available to us all with an internet connection. The paradigm is shifting again, however, and that is down to more and more teachers seeing how they can take video and use it to make their grammar lessons work better. I have been preparing Tildee Video Tutorials, all of which can be seen on the right of the blog. I would like to express and show through this post some specific examples of how video can be a really great way to teach form and structure. First of all, a How to Use Tildee.com video tutorial. Now that you have the tutorial handy for making your lessons, here is how I go about the lesson. 

STAGE ONE: Explicit Grammar Teaching. Although the form of the grammar has been taught already, it is still necessary to remind the students of how the form and syntax fit.  By doing mini drills, yes! I wrote, "drills", you can give them a sense of structure in the old sense, while showing them a progressive approach to the lesson.  Turkish students do not mind this attention to form at all; in fact they welcome it and seem to enjoy it.

 STAGE TWO: Provide some verbs connected to the video. By preparing the videos for the students you are affording them the opportunity to focus on how the syntax works. If you don't provide at this stage, it can cause unnecessary confusion for the students. I like to do this as a scaffolding model. I will, of course, get students to find the verbs themselves in other activities once I am confident they have grasped the order and form.

STAGE THREE:. In this video, I made a short film set in my garden. The miming of the actions can make students really connect with the content since their teacher is 'acting' for them. However, the main sources for my grammar videos are Hollywood film clips uploaded from YouTube and Vimeo. In fact, Tildee.com only accepts these two sources at the moment. But, I have assurances from the CEO that they are exploring other sources' urls to be allowed on the site.

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STAGE FOUR & FIVE: students get to practise writing down their observations. I made these two slides in order to let students work with proper nouns and the third person pronoun forms. He/She/It cause so many problems for Turkish students as there is only 'o' in their language for the third person.

By getting the students to watch the video and record their observations by springboarding them with the verbs means your students will work through the video with ease. It is more of a consolidation and compounding of pre-taught grammar that works well here. Once they have conjugated their verbs, and shared with the class, your students should have a sounder understanding of how and when the Present Continuous is used along time-frame. 

For other verb forms and videos refer to the side panel on the right. There are over 120 tutorials made for your use. Although there are many videos there for other purposes, the grammar-specific have been made visible via their meta language terminology. As the blog evolves, more and more examples and ideas will be posted.