Lesson ideas - HistoryEnglish to accompany the great 10-part video series ‘ A History of the English Language in 10 minutes’ from the Open University You Tube Learn Channel.Please do feedback your experiences and suggestions regarding using these fantastic video resources with your learners. 
If you have had a chance to look at part 1 then you will realise what a wonderful set of video resources the Open University has created.Although it’s quite clear that the langauge in the videos is of a high level and flying at a great speed, I do believe there is potential for using the resources at different levels of English learning. The key to this is to grade the ‘tasks’ rather than grade the ‘materials’. So I hope the activity below and those in further posts are flexible and adaptable for use with learners of varying proficiencies in English.
There is no doubt that as a subject of study the history of languages is absolutely fascinating. For me it is the relation between language, history and culture that I find so interesting. No doubt you do too and I hope you enjoy using the activities and videos with your learners. Do please feedback experiences and suggestions.
In 1066, William the Conqueror invaded Britain and bought with him fancy French words to add to the English language.
Pre-watching: What do you know about the following Peoples that have come to live and settle in the UK over the last 2000 years; The Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, and the Normans. Do you know where they came from originally? Do you know when they came to Britain? Put them in order of when they came to Britain. What do the abbreviations AD and BC stand for?
Answers: (Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans), they came from (Roman Empire, Denmark and Saxony, Denmark / Norway and finally France. Time periods (43AD, 400AD+ 800AD+ 1066) AD=Anno Domini – The Year of our Lord and BC=Before Christ.
While watching video: Which words came into the English language because of the Norman conquest?
Answers: judge, jury, evidence and justice then cow, sheep and swine (from English farmers) while beef, mutton and pork from French speakers.
Post-video discussion: What do judge, jury, evidence and justice mean? In what context do we use these words? What do they mean? What do you know about the legal system in the UK?
Personalisation: In many countries we use BC and AD to refer to the year. Is this the case in your country – if not what do you use and what year and date is it in your country now? As you know English has many words that have come from other languages, does your language have many words like English. Are there many words in your language that come from other languages – if so why is this? Is your first language influenced by other languages? Do you have many words from other languages in your language? There are many synonyms in English – are synonyms useful in making a language richer or just a pain for language learners?
Extension: Focusing on the words ‘jury, judge, evidence and justice’ could make a nice beginning to a class project on the judicial system of the UK and/or other countries. Students could research how courts work etc and compare different systems. They could make notes and compare in class discussion. It’s obviously a sensitive topic but one very relevant to students and their language / citizenship learning
A fantastic series of ten 1-minute video clips outlining the evolution of the English language from Anglo-Saxon times to the Internet and Global English.Brought to us by the Open University Learn You Tube channel and humourously narrated by Clive Anderson, The history of the English language in 10 minutes amounts to a gem of video material for English language learners.
Over the next ten posts you will find the ten 1-minute videos with activities for lessons. My main aim with this work is to use video resources to develop speaking in the classroom. Furthermore I think the video resources and activities posted could be used as part of a project on the History of English or a learners’ language histories project. I hope you and your students enjoy the videos and activities. Any suggestions of your own would be very welcome.
Pre-watching: Do you know how old the English language is?
While-watching: Which words came into the English language because of the: (i) Anglo Saxons, (ii) Christian Missionaries and (iii) Vikings?
Answers (i) house, woman, loaf, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (ii) martyr, bishop and font (iii) drag, ransack, thrust and die
Post-watching – What time periods did the Anglo Saxons, Christian Missionaries and Vikings live in? Where did they come from? What language did the missionaries use and why?
Personalisation: Do you know how old your first language is? Do you know where any of the words come from? Do you speak any other languages? What do you know about these languages? Find out all the languages spoken by learners in your class and find out as much as you can about them from your classmates.
Extension: Create posters displaying information about languages spoken in your class. You could use the Internet to help with research for the posters and creating a glogster on the topic would be fun.
This activity idea for English language learners comes from having recently read an article on Yahoo about the ‘top ten most hated foods, that you should give another chance’.Activity Plan
There are many ways you could use this text with learners for langauge work – there are some really good lexical sets in their e.g. NUTRITION – vitamin, protein, cholesterol etc. This simple lesson activity could be used as part of a project on ‘Healthy Eating’ – see some other activities on this. How would you use this text with your learners?
This film is made by LifeMosaic an organisation supporting the rights, territories and cultures of indigenous peoples. Read more…
It illustrates to me the way young people are able to talk about complex issues such as climate change in both a sophisticated and personalised manner. This video could be really useful for language work for talking about climate change and other environmental issues in class with English language learners. You could also use it to demonstrate how the children make predictions about the future. And LifeMosaic have plenty of other quality videos too.
visiting schools and language institutions
asking learners about their experiences, goals, problems and achievements
talking to teachers about their methods, problems and solutions
hearing tips and advice from learners and teachers
The films throw up some very interesting discussions indeed. I was particularly fascinated by young adult learners in ‘Thoughts from Brazil’ talking about their online communication and how it helps them learn English. Not only great resources for use in class, each film comes with classroom and self-study material packs. I think it would be really interesting to use these videos to facilitate learner-talk about language learning goals, experiences, problems and achievements, or even for learners to create their own films. I’ve embedded ‘Thoughts from Brazil’ below and links to the other videos and accompanying materials. Enjoy the films – great project and useful video resources for your lessons.
Thoughts from Brazil
Conversations with the Earth, CWE, is a collaborative multimedia project seeking to address issues of global climate change from local perspectives.Insightshare and partners are using participatory video and photography to enable people who are affected by climate change to tell their stories and in doing so aim to find a viable collective response to the global challenges. Read more about this…
CWE have created a wonderful website that is a treasure trove of video, text and image based resources for ESOL learners. The home page takes the form of a map from which you can locate videos and photo essays about the issues faced by communities around the world. Many of the videos could be used with ESOL learners, perhaps as part of work discussing global issues, the environment etc. The video resources would be particularly useful with learners who are studying for exams like IELTS and you want to develop some content ideas with the learners for essay writing.
I suggested in my last post that I would come up with some ideas for using Wallwisher in the ESOL classroom.Having made that promise and a couple of days of head scratching here goes. Each project would require teachers to set up a wall yourself first. Read more about this
Wallwisher is an online classroom wall display that teachers can set up in minutes as a space for collaborative student projects.Essentially Wallwisher allows you to create a space (a wall) on the web where students can stick texts, images, videos and web links. Each wall you create has its own web address so you and the students can visit it like any other web page. Wallwisher offers endless possibilities for classroom projects and lesson ideas, the first thing that came into my head was to use Wallwisher as a space for young adult ESOL learners to share their favourite music videos from You Tube.
Watch the following video that I’ve made for my students to show them how to share music videos on a wall created for the project. I’ve created the video as a learner resource that I hope can be used by all learners regardless of language level.
If you would like to know how to make your own walls for classroom projects then watch this video from teachertrainingvideos.com.
In my next post I will be suggesting a list of ESOL classroom ideas for using Wallwisher. In the meantime have a play with Wallwisher and do stick a music video to the wall.
Thanks to Carmen for being the first to try it out.
Its making brings to an end a fascinating exploration of the Fallas fiesta, though leaving behind more questions than answers can be found. The creation of the Fallas Voices series opens a window to the cultures, languages and histories of the people of Valencia. In doing so it reveals the power of film to connect the lives of learners to their English language use and learning. A means of engagement that goes well beyond the often narrow linguistic focus of the teaching of English as a foreign language.
There is no doubt in my mind that film media offer great opportunities to English language learners worldwide. Getting to know our learners is an essential element of language teaching practice. In whatever context, the lives of the learners (and teachers) can never be ignored. It is the sharing of knowledge and experience within classroom communities that allows for the building of relations and personal investment in learning. Such sharing can be facilitated through Web 2.0 media such as video. Going beyond the constraints and often irrelevant texts of coursebooks and worksheets is essential in language learning and moreover in building learner confidence that is so important but often neglected.
The onus of responsibility for language learning and achievement through formal assessment nearly always seems to rest with the learners. While of course there is some truth in this, language learning I would argue is very much two-way and therefore I try to understand how we can open up language learning as a positive, fulfilling process through our classroom and assessment practices. I don’t for one minute consider the making of films as an answer but rather as a way of widening access and participation to classroom learning. I hope the making of the Fallas Voices films goes some way to showing this.
It was a really great day – I don’t think I’ve been to a one-day conference where there have been so many illuminating talks and workshops. Given that many of the talks were parallel presentations I wasn’t able to attend all but I would like to say a few words about the ones I did manage to get to.
The day got off to a great start with Philida Schellekens’s plenary presentation in which she made the point that many ESOL students find it very difficult to understand spoken speech and that this presents a barrier to communicating with the outside world. She emphasised the need to pay more attention to how learners are able to process the stream of sound that they hear, and gave some useful classroom ideas to help with this. The theme of the day was ‘linking learners and the outside world’ and many of the talks looked at how such connections can be facilitated through the use of digital technologies. Pete Sharma gave a talk packed full of classroom ideas for using Interactive Whiteboards and at the same time demonstrated the use of various technologies such as Flip cams and ipads and how they might be used in class. Mike Harrison and Phil Bird from the British Council ESOL project, talked about differentiating learning using technology. I thought the classroom examples they gave were truly inspiring. I particularly liked a project they showed by Callie Wilkinson and her learners, in which the students used various Web 2.0 tools such as an online Cartoon movie maker called ‘Dvolver‘. In this case the learners produced a cartoon about ‘why aliens should visit the planet earth’. Not only highly entertaining but a great example of learner-led Web 2.0 media production in ESOL.
I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to speak at the conference and presented some ideas about ESOL learners making and sharing videos. I am particularly grateful to Mike Richmond from Leeds City College for sharing his learners’ work on Web2English, which I used along with my own learners’ work at Leeds City College and in Quart de Poblet, Spain.
The highlight of my day was Jessica Frye’s talk on ‘making use of short films in the EFL classroom’, you can read more about this here
Thanks again to all for a highly enjoyable day and in particular to conference organisers Will Nash and Bev Davies for making it all happen.
Jessica Frye* gave an excellent presentation at the IATEFL / NATESOL Conference, 4th June, Salford City College on the topic of ‘making use of short films in the EFL/ESOL Classroom.In this session, Jessica demonstrated the flexibility of using ‘silent films’ with learners of all language levels. She showed us two wonderful short films; ‘The Black Hole’ and ‘Wrong Side of the Bed’. The audience discussed how the films could be used in the classroom, in particular with ESOL learners. Plenty of ideas came out of the session and many thanks to Jessica for this inspiring workshop. The videos are embedded below.
Besides working with these films, Jessican also gave us some really useful links** for finding more short films. These were:
‘Futureshorts’ – http://www.youtube.com/user/futureshorts
‘Vancouver Film School’ - http://www.youtube.com/user/VancouverFilmSchool
‘Vimeo’ – http://www.vimeo.com
‘Google videos’ http://video.google.co.uk > advanced video search
‘BBC Film Network’ – http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/
‘National Film Board of Canada’ - http://www.nfb.ca/
‘Coffee Shorts’ - http://www.coffeeshorts.co.uk
‘25 Films from the Sunday Times http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_ entertainment/film/article3334789.ece
**Just a warning – some of the short films found on these links may be completely unsuitable for students in your classes, they are really to help you find films that you think could work with your learners.
*Jessica Frye is a founding member of FILTA (Film in Language Teaching Association) which offers a collection of teaching resources that make it easy for language teachers and lecturers to use film as a language and culture resource. You can contribute to the community site and download resources such as study guides, podcasts and vodcasts for Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), English as a Foreign Language (EFL), Spanish and Urdu. Resources for other languages will be added soon. You can also find information. To find out more and to join, visit: www.filta.org.uk or email: filtacommunity@googlemail.com
Further Resources from teachertrainingvideos.com
Tutorial: ‘All about You Tube’
