Video With Teenagers

A lot has been said about the use of the Internet and new technologies in the classroom, but in the rush to modernise our classrooms and update our teaching styles it's easy to overlook video. It seems that video is suddenly out of fashion and not innovative any more. BEN GOLDSTEIN disagrees, and here he shares with us some tried and tested adaptable video activities which appeal to teenagers.

The idea that video is old-fashioned is still largely due to a very conservative use of video in the classroom, especially with teenage classes. If a class is yawning, grumbling, or playing up, then it's very tempting to throw a video or DVD of Friends on which they won't understand but will make them shut up. But it's important that we do not fall into this trap.

Some of the following activities are often focused on particular films, but these can be modified for others and they can be adapted according to the level you're teaching. They all, however, have a direct appeal to teenagers, and I have found them a good way to motivate students. They can also make students see that video can play an integral role in the classroom and not be just an extra.

One aspect which links all the activities is that students are encouraged to read between the lines, to think, and to analyse what they see, not just to answer comprehension questions on tedious news bulletins.

We begin with advertising. As we all know, advertisements are an excellent resource in the teenage classroom. Students are experts in them and are exposed to hundreds a day. They will certainly know a lot more about them than you do! But one of the snags is to how to make the use of ads genuinely interactive in the classroom.

ADVERTISING

Aim
To enable students to analyse television advertisements and identify the techniques that are used.
Procedure
Step 1: Ask students to discuss current ads which they particularly like or dislike and why. Encourage them to explain the ad to the rest of the class.

Step 2: Show the class an ad from a magazine which uses a simple advertising technique, such as 'before and after', for example-you could show the class the photo of a man with grey hair and ask them what product is needed and how it will be shown in the ad. Other good before-and-after ads include those for cleaning products, medicines, hair gel, and so on.

Step 3: Ask students to explain the 'before and after' technique; for instance, we see a rapid transformation and the sudden change is always positive.

Step 4: Introduce other techniques with some sample products or specific ads that adopt this technique (this can also be done as a matching activity). Encourage the students to complete gaps (sample answers given).
a Before and after: cleaning products
b Association of ideas: Marlboro (US cowboys)
c Expert/celebrity: Coca-Cola (Figo)
d Key words (slogans): Nokia - Connecting People
e Story line - Yellow Pages
f Science and technology: ads that include all kinds of technical data that you can't understand
g The camera never lies: McDonald's (the hamburger you see in the photo will be twice as big as the one you'll get in your hand)
h Testimonials ('the man in the street'): deodorant, cleaning products

Step 5: Show a series of ads which incorporate these techniques. Ask students to identify which techniques have been used and if they like/dislike the ad. The ads can be in any language.

Step 6: Give students various products or photos of products and ask them which technique they would use to sell it (you could use aspirin, takeaway pizza, trainers, and so on). Ask them to create their own ads.

Other alternatives with TV ads
1 Guess the ad: Show the first part of an ad and freeze it before the product is revealed. Students have to guess the product. (Yellow Pages ads are often good for this.)
2 Political ads: find ads which do not sell a product but promote an idea (anti-drinking and driving, water conservation, and the like), and ask students what the message is, who the target audience is, and to rate how successful / effective it is on a scale of 1 to 10.
Tip: Very often award-winning ads are shown in special programmes on television. These are some of the best to use and are easier to record and store. Keep a file of magazine / newspaper ads related to similar products. You can ask students to write a comparison of two perfume ads or two car ads, for example.

FILMS
Using whole feature films in class can be problematic from a number of points of view: it can be boring, demotivating, or something which can be done out of class. We know that using extracts from films is a great way to engage teenagers, but how can we do this in a way which will be both accessible, and which will motivate them? And more importantly, how do we choose the sequences themselves?

One way to make the best use of original films is to link sequences thematically. Here are some suggestions for finding scenes with a common link: suspense, dating, openings, and humour.

SUSPENSE (ALL LEVELS)
For lower-level students it's good to show sequences which feature suspense. Particularly good are chase sequences which are very visual and do not depend on comprehension. Such high-action adventure scenes are naturally very popular with teenagers. You can choose any kind of suspense thriller, but here are two examples, and as we are using them without sound, they do not need to be in the original English version.

1 Sequences from Hitchcock's Vertigo
a Kim Novak throwing herself into the San Francisco Bay
b Kim Novak throwing herself off the church tower
You should show approximately five minutes before these climactic moments.

Procedure
Step 1: Show the sequence without sound. Student A sits with his back to the screen, while student B narrates what she sees on the screen.
Step 2: After watching, all the students A-who didn't watch the screen-are asked to piece together what they can remember. Students B will corroborate or not. This is quite fun because obviously how accurate their accounts are depends on the narrators in question.
Step 3: The whole class watches the sequence through without sound. The teacher pauses to highlight key vocabulary, mistakes that students had made in their descriptions, and so on.

2 Sequence from Seven
Show the chase sequence (about seven minutes), which is about halfway through the film. Or you could choose any other chase sequence that is full of action.

Procedure
Ask students to watch whole sequence and note down any aspects which add to the suspense of the film. They have to imagine this from both the director's and the audience's point of view (for example, long corridors, shouting, close-ups, intense music). Some of this vocabulary can be pre-taught. Get feedback from students and then run through the sequence, pausing at key moments.

HUMOUR (HIGH LEVELS)
It's always good to introduce a bit of a laugh into the classroom. In a similar way to the activity on advertising, this task encourages teenagers to read between the lines and analyse why something is funny. This is a great way to introduce different senses of humour as well.

Procedure
Step 1: Ask students to discuss programmes or comedians they consider funny/unfunny. Encourage them to think why they believe this.
Step 2: Introduce different types of humour (this for older students), such as satire, English, feminist, absurd, black humour.
Step 3: Show clips from different films which encapsulate this type of humour.
Suggestions:
Four Weddings and a Funeral (English)
Thelma and Louise (feminist)
The Life of Brian (satire)
Trainspotting (black humour/sick)
Mr Bean (slapstick)
Ask students to rate how funny the sequences are on a scale of 1 to 10 and why they are funny/unfunny. This forces them to pay attention to the purely visual aspect; it is often not important how much they actually understand.

Consider these factors when discussing why a scene is funny or not: element of surprise, play on words, misunderstanding, embarrassment, facial expression. What type of humour is represented in this scene?

Even if you don't have access to these materials or you consider that some might not work with your particular teenage class, I hope these ideas will at least stimulate you to doing more experimental things with video in the classroom. And with DVD now an integral part of every teenager's life, the possibilities that will open up are endless.

Ben Goldstein teaches English at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He is the main author of Framework; a six-level general English adult course from Richmond Publishing. Ben has written articles for ELT newletters and journals, and given workshops and talks at many key events in the ELT calendar. He is also researching his doctoral thesis on video at the UPF.