Let’s try TV in the EFL class!
By Fabiola Reyes, fabirey@ula.ve and
Carmen Chacón, ctchacon@cantv.net
If you are teaching English in a
foreign context you know how difficult it is for students to be exposed to
authentic input outside the class. Based on this reality and taking advantage of
the advance of satellite technology, we decided to incorporate TV watching as
part of the curriculum. As English learners we recognize that TV watching is a
useful source of input that helps get the gist of messages from context while
learning real-world vocabulary, pronunciation, and culture. So, why not using
cable TV—which nowadays is accessible to many homes—to encourage your students
to listen to English through movies, sitcoms, videos, and other shows of their
preference?
Thinking about the lack of input
outside the class, a year ago we started a project in collaboration using cable
TV to provide our students with such input out of the classroom. We thought that
it was a challenging activity but at the same time was innovative to have them
develop the habit of watching TV at home as a task to improve their listening
and vocabulary skills. To achieve this goal, we needed the students to keep a
record of their listening and the time they spent watching TV, so we required
them to write a weekly journal to summarize the activity. Thus, we negotiated
with the students and set some guidelines they needed to follow. We wanted them
to be at ease and get used to watching TV as part of their daily routine, as a
fun activity; therefore, we let them know that the journals’ goal was content
rather than accuracy.
Getting
Started
We gave students freedom to
select their favorite programs, the time when they would watch them, and the
choice to join their classmates for the activity. Besides, we asked them to
watch at least eight hours a week. They were required to hand in the journal
with entries including the name of the program, channel, schedule, summary of
the plot and major characters, and a brief comment on them. At first, it was not
easy to get them accustomed to the activity, since they wanted to understand
everything, but it was not possible to do so as they were not trained, and they
did not know what strategies to use. They complained, so we supported them with
written feedback and strategy instruction.
Strategy
Training
We followed Oxford’s (1990)
classification of leaning strategies and explicitly instructed the students
about metacognitive strategies (paying attention to the way they got the
message), compensation strategies (how they overcame limitations in listening
and writing), affective strategies (how they encouraged themselves or lowered
their anxiety), and cognitive strategies (taking notes, summarizing, repeating,
etc.). They seemed relieved and a few weeks later their writing entries showed
improvement and their testimonies suggested that they were getting more
comfortable in doing the activity and some of them came up with strategies that
reflected their individual differences and learning styles.
Weekly
Feedback
We read the journals within a
week and returned them to the students with written feedback about content and
supportive comments. In our weekly review, we kept track of the major accuracy
problems (e.g. subject-verb agreement, verb tense, gerund after prepositions) to
take care of them in the Grammar class, which the students were also
taking.
From the experience we have
described, we encourage other EFL teachers to use cable TV as a handy source
that may help students with their listening skills in the first place, but also
with vocabulary and writing like in our students’ case. Through this experience
we realized that the students gradually increased their skills to comprehend
English and write extensively, making progress not only in content (sense and
coherence) but also in accuracy. In addition, they learned about cultural
aspects embedded in the social context of each program; no doubt television is
an authentic source of input that provides aural stimuli, nonverbal cues, and
real life vocabulary.
Reference
Carmen Chacón is an associate
professor of English at the
Fabiola Reyes is an assistant
professor of English at the
Video News February 2006 Volume 17 Number 1: Table of Contents
