Teenagers’ favourite English learning activities

Alexandra Naghi — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:41:53 +0200

Teenagers love watching films TV series and music videos, so, as an English teacher, for eleven years, I have been using these passions, to make students like learning English. Here are some examples of good practice, for English teachers to use, with their teenage learners, according to School Syllabus from 2009 for 5th - 8th grades, Expressing personal preferences theme.
Watching trailers to guess the film type or genre is an activity that I use with elementary school students, who love it, because they can pretend to be in a movie theatre, while sitting in the classroom. For this activity I use 8 trailers, such as: action (Fast and Furious), comedy (Mr. Bean at the bus stop), cartoon (Tom and Jerry), documentary (India), thriller (Twilight), science fiction (Men in Black), western (Django) and romance (A star is born), with visual and auditory clues. I give my students the list of film types/ genres and ask them to watch the trailers and guess what type of film they illustrate. As a following activity, I ask my students to guess the film titles and if they do not succeed with all, I give them a list and ask them to match the titles with the types of films.
As an observation, teachers can use a different number of trailers, depending on their students’ age and language level, they can also use whatever film trailers or full-length films they like or they can find online or in their own film collection. When it comes to full films, teachers should consider showing students only a few minutes of the videos, because of the time limit a school lesson has.
Watching videos to guess the types of music is another activity that I use with elementary school students to test their music knowledge. I usually play the videos and ask my students to guess eight types of music: opera (Luciano Pavarotti – O sole mio), hip-hop (Eminem – Mocking bird), Latin American (Enrique Iglesias – Bailando), rock (Metallica – Nothing else matters), pop (Lady Gaga – In the shallow), soul (Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah), country (Rednex – Cotton Eye Joe) and reggae ( Bob Marley – No woman no cry). Then, they check their answers by watching the videos and I ask them if they recognize the singers/ bands and the song names. This activity can be used as a warm-up or to give feed-back.
Furthermore, music videos can be played with or without visual support, as an alternative to the activity described above and to make things more interesting for students. Teachers can use the number of videos appropriate to their students’ age and language level. Also, the types of music may vary, depending on the students’ preferences and music knowledge.

Very interesting recommendations ...

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:41:53 +0200

Very interesting recommendations, dear Alexandra! A film I have used several times so far with my students with great results is Flipped (2010) and two songs I would recommend to use are "You Raise Me Up" and "Fool Again" (by Westlife). The best English lesson based on a music video I have ever seen was created by a teacher who hosted a pedagogical meeting a few years ago. The video was Bon Jovi's "This House Is Not for Sale".

Yes, I also use trailers a lot, ...

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:41:53 +0200

Yes, I also use trailers a lot, even if I teach high school students.They are supposed to work on tasks that are a little more difficult, such as comprehension questions, the ways they imagine the end..and so on.

Thank you, dear ladies, for your ...

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:41:53 +0200

Thank you, dear ladies, for your advice and appreciation :)

You are most welcome, dear Alexa ...

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 13:41:53 +0200

You are most welcome, dear Alexandra!

iTeach: Blog: Teenagers’ favourite English learning activities

Teenagers’ favourite English learning activities

Very interesting recommendations ...

Yes, I also use trailers a lot, ...

Thank you, dear ladies, for your ...

You are most welcome, dear Alexa ...