Llengua anglesa a secundària. Competència digital

One of the great advantages that the net offers to English teachers is that we can practically adapt anything to our teaching practice. One such example is English trailers, where you may do a number of listening exercises while you watch film trailers from real Hollywood films. What makes it even more interesting is that the latest releases can be found there.

• Go to English trailers

The page is divided into four sections. On the top left there’s the title of the film and the list of activities available for each trailer; the exercises are displayed underneath. To the right we find the film screen at the top and the trailer selection menu at the bottom.

Start the visit to the web by reading the help tutorial on the main page. Click on the arrow

• Go to the Trailer Selection Menu. Choose The Incredibles and Change Movie Trailers.

Notice that you may choose films by

first letter in the title

level of difficulty

full list of trailers available

• On the left appears a General Warm-up. It is a pre-listening activity to start talking about the film, which can be done in pairs or whole-class. In the drop-down menu, change to Summary and read it.

This might be a good moment to watch the trailer for the first time. Click on Play.

You may want your students to listen and watch, or have them read at the same time. If so, choose Script from the drop-down menu (click on the words in blue to learn their meaning).

• Play a second time. Do the two interactive exercises while you listen: Cloze and Quiz. Check your answers. (Remember you can press the Pause button to give you time to write).

• The talking activity: personalizing is a follow-up exercise to be done in pairs or whole-class. It is intended to be done orally, but it might be a suitable writing activity, maybe even set for homework.

• The Web links section asks a number of questions on the movie and the characters. Students must go to the links provided and find the answers (in this case, the official website is an excellent place to continue listening and reading).

• In the Forum students can post a message about the film in general, or send in a review.

• This website offers many more interesting features that teachers might be interested in. All you need to do is to register for free. When you log in, you will see that the trailers are classified as Non-Graded and Graded, and that you have access to the Teacher’s Menu. By creating a username and a password, you can add your class to the site and monitor students progress, as the scores they get will be recorded and saved to a database.

• Timing: one session in the computer room.
• Resources: It is advisable that the students use headphones instead of the computer’s loudspeakers, to avoid excess noise and interferences.

Create a worksheet for your students with the instructions and complementary exercises.

http://international.ouc.bc.ca/takako/index.html This is a listening exercise with a difference, and it sure will catch the students’ attention. Each episode consists of a listening text and some vocabulary and comprehension questions. It is also possible to download the mp3 audio file and the pdf text in order to work offline.

http://www.eslvideo.com/ is a place to learn English with free videos from many different sites. Click on Quizzes and choose a level. Then click on a video from the column on the left. All videos come with some questions, the transcript and notes with information about culture, grammar, slang, or pronunciation. They can be added to a blog and anyone may submit new videos with quizzes.

See also http://www.yappr.com/ There’s a wide choice of videos with transcripts and subtitles in different languages. Click on Ver and choose a category. There are also some games.