Friday, March 14, 2014

Organizing Ideas During Movie Talk

One of my favorite activities in class is the use of short films, commercials or animations to provide comprehensible input and lots of repetitions to my students in a very compelling and engaging way.
The technique is called Movie Talk
Basically, you choose a short video (preferably no longer than 5 minutes) that contains the vocabulary or structures that you are interested in.  Then you play it in class, pausing when the image shows what you want to describe, and providing the repetitions that your students need to acquire the structures, TPRS® style.  This is beautiful because it is totally in context, the images are entertaining and students are following very attentive, because they want to know what will happen next. 
When I first began using the technique I would play it all first for students to enjoy, and then replay it to pause and talk.  This year, I modified it after seeing Cynthia Hitz's blog posts on the same topic.  It did make a difference, because students' attention is not the same when they have already seen the end of the story.  Duh! :) Martina Bex has also a very resourceful blog, and she has been posting a lot of ideas on how to use Movie Talk.
In my opinion, based on my own experience, the key to Movie Talk is to have very clear what your targets are for the lesson.  It is easy to go crazy on details! You still will describe and talk about many other things that are shown, but it is crucial to focus on a limited amount of vocabulary.  The rest is the "frosting on the cake", it is what provides the context for the comprehensible input that your students receive.  This is a great way to differenciate: according to their level and abilities, students will get just the right amount of that "frosting", and still you will have the whole group meeting your target.
After collecting the writings of my level 4 class this week, I saw that many students were making the same mistake when using imperfect, specifically the verbs "era" and "estaba"  (was).  I thought that was a done deal! So, I decided to use Movie Talk to address the issue once again.  I am preparing a lesson using "Chicken or The Egg" , a fun animation about a pig who falls in love with a hen.  This time I made a graphic organizer (see below)to help students land all those ideas, and clarify their confusion.  It has two columns to categorize era/estaba, (target) and two other columns for the other preterite and imperfect verbs that we will include as the "frosting".
Students will have their handout, and I will have it on my white board as well, adding as I go through the video.  I hope this organizer will make a difference in facilitating the acquisition of these complex verbs and structures for my students.  What ideas do you have to improve this activity?






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