Category: pedagogy

In support of parallel texts

Published on by mlapworth1 Comment

Plenty has been written about the benefits for motivated language learners of using parallel texts to help learn a language. (Do a quick google search and you’ll see.)

Much of what is written in support of parallel texts is along the following lines:

  • They allow users to access texts beyond their level.
    Readers can read an L2 text and have constant recourse to an L1 equivalent so that they can check that they are understanding what they are reading.
  • They allow users to directly compare the L1 and the L2, which helps promote ‘noticing’.
    The ability to compare the way vocab and structures are formed and combined in the L2 with reference to the L1 equivalent promotes this noticing of differences which may not happen if students only had access to the L2 text.

Parallel texts can indeed be a powerful tool, if used by motivated language learners who really are using the time with the texts to understand how the Continue reading “In support of parallel texts” →

Creating video content with TeachVid in mind…

Published on by mlapworthLeave a comment

This post is aimed at those who may be considering creating TeachVid content based on their own YouTube videos, and it is divided into 2 sections: first, some general principles for producing content that we feel will work best on TeachVid; then, some simple low-tech ideas for the sorts of videos that will work great on TeachVid.

1) What sort of video content works best on TeachVid?

TeachVid is not really about extensive listening. Nor is it primarily about comprehension questions (although that is one of the many activity options available).

Primarily, TeachVid resources are aimed at getting students to engage with the video transcript via a range of interactive text-reconstruction activities, with each activity broken down into several mini-tasks directly linked to the video sections / captions.

(For more about this for those not particularly familiar with TeachVid, see: the methodology page on TeachVid | this “Learn Mode” blog post | this “Activity Mode” blog post | this parallel texts blog post)

Bearing in mind all of the above, the following are some general principles which we feel will help you to produce the sort of content that works best with TeachVid’s interactive activity tools:

Continue reading “Creating video content with TeachVid in mind…” →

How can I use a TeachVid resource with my students?

Published on by mlapworth1 Comment

This post looks at 5 different ways of exploiting a TeachVid resource with your students…

The Resource Page

1) The Resource Page

Students (or you) can search the resources to find one that they (or you) want to use. Spend time in Learn Mode listening, watching, pausing the video, comparing the languages, clicking the subtitles for text-to-speech and chunk notes etc. Students (if working individually) can then do any of the available activities in any order and have their scores and progress saved by TeachVid.

Continue reading “How can I use a TeachVid resource with my students?” →

How long should video captions be on TeachVid?

Published on by mlapworthLeave a comment

Some questions to consider when creating transcript-based resources on TeachVid:

  • How long should each caption be?
  • Where’s the best place to split text?
  • When should I join separate lines into a single caption?

The image at the top of the post shows step 3.2 of the resource creation process, where every line of text in your transcript (from step 3.1) is shown as a blue “caption bubble”.

At this point, you can click anywhere within a caption bubble to split it into more than one caption. You would typically do this if your Continue reading “How long should video captions be on TeachVid?” →