If you’re an online or in-person language teacher, conducting one-to-one lessons or group lessons, then you’ll know how important it is to keep your students fully engaged. To be a successful teacher or tutor isn’t as simple as people might assume; it’s not just about having knowledge and knowing how to share it. Being an excellent language teacher requires a high level of creativity, enthusiasm and genuinely caring about the progress of your students.
In today's modern world, where attention spans are shorter and distractions are abundant, traditional teaching methods and academic intentions alone aren’t enough to capture and maintain students' interest. Whether it’s something you’re already aware of or not, TV and film is by far the best way to keep students engaged in learning and successfully teach them a new language and/or guide them into fluency.
Incorporating TV, film and video alongside innovative tools and techniques can truly make a difference. These forms of media are powerful educational tools that offer a dynamic and captivating way to enhance the language learning experience through comprehensible and entertaining visual and audible content. This increasingly impactful teaching method can bring something unique to your classroom to keep your students both focused and entertained.
Table of Contents:
- Why does videos work so well as a teaching tool?
- How can I apply this in the classroom?
- Where can I find the best shows and activities for my students?
- Lingopie for Schools
- Popular FAQs
Why does videos work so well as a teaching tool?
The authenticity that shows and movies provide creates an incredibly immersive experience for students, developing an emotional connection for them towards the culture and people of the language they want to learn. Once this connection has been opened, the student instinctively feels more motivated and encouraged to delve deeper into learning because entertainment and emotional integration are at the core of their experience.
As well as being something engaging and enjoyable, films and TV shows are naturally very practical and constructive learning tools simply through natively-spoken dialogue demonstrating natural speech patterns and intonation. Visual story-telling prompts, themes and plots give context to slang, repeated popular words and nuanced cultural references which automatically creates synergy between a student’s listening and comprehension skills. The use of subtitles also aids comprehension massively, especially when they’re in the same language as the audio/the same language that the student wants to learn.
How can I apply this in the classroom?
One of the most common ways that teachers and tutors use movies and TV for educational purposes is by assigning an episode of a show to their students as homework and asking them to come back to the next lesson with native quotes and vocabulary that they learned from the script.
Sections or scenes from an episode can also be watched and analysed in lessons with quiz sheets and PDFs as a reflective and informative task since post-viewing activities reinforce vocabulary, grammar and cultural awareness.
Related:
Milena Quaresma
Milena Quaresma
Milena Quaresma
Where can I find the best shows and activities for my students?
Lingopie is an online content-streaming platform described as ‘the Netflix of language learning’. They provide a huge library of popular premium content, including selected Netflix shows, and an array of innovative built-in learning features to enhance language acquisition. Lingopie offers a variety of content including documentaries, telenovelas, hit TV shows, movies, podcasts, comedies, dramas, short-form content, and travel-related material. The platform supports learning in nine different languages, with different dialects within each language and also specialises in tv shows for children (Lingopie Kids) in Spanish.
Lingopie is an exceptional platform that offers a diverse range of features to cater to the distinct preferences and modalities of both teachers and students, resulting in significant improvements in language learning outcomes.
Lingopie for Schools
Lingopie has recently introduced ‘Lingopie for Schools’ which is an incredible section of their website where teachers have access to a dashboard for all of their online or in-person students and can create unique assignments revolving around the content available on the site to keep students engaged in and out of the classroom.
Teachers can invite students to watch a particular episode or movie and then quiz them on the vocabulary that they learnt. Whilst watching the episode, students can click on the interactive subtitles at the bottom of the screen to drop specific words onto flashcards, before being quizzed on them at the end of the video. Teachers can monitor the progress of the student by receiving the results of how many words were clicked and practised during and after the show. Teachers can then use this information to guide the following lesson and create stimulating conversations and lesson plans to keep their language students interested and excited to learn.
Age restrictions can also be applied to the lesson content depending on whether the student is a child, teenager or adult, giving teachers the option to hover over and assign shows or movies that are solely relevant to each specific language-learning class or student that they teach.
Here’s a short breakdown explaining the ways that Lingopie is excellent for schooling:
Listening
With an extensive collection of high-quality audio content, Lingopie provides access to native speakers and various accents from different countries, enabling students to enhance their listening comprehension skills. The platform's integrated tools allow students to repeat sentences, adjust speech rates, and evaluate their pronunciation, facilitating targeted pronunciation improvement.
Visual
Lingopie's vast library of premium videos, complemented with contextual flashcards, simplifies the learning process, amplifies comprehension, and fosters better retention. By incorporating visual elements, Lingopie makes language learning more accessible and engaging for students.
Reading
Every video on Lingopie is accompanied by full transcripts and dual interactive subtitles. These features empower students to read along while watching their favourite shows, enriching their reading abilities, and understanding of grammar, spelling and vocabulary. Clicking on the subtitles provides on-screen grammar tips and instantaneous translations of words and phrases, further supporting reading comprehension.
Multimodal
Lingopie embraces a multimodal approach to language learning by seamlessly integrating listening, reading, and speaking modalities. Students can interact with premium content through innovative technology, allowing them to engage with the material in multiple ways. Teachers can create personalized multimodal assignments that align with classroom learning objectives, providing a comprehensive learning experience and motivating students to actively learn.
What other tools does Lingopie offer?
Below are just a few of the tools that Lingopie provides that help to create the perfect language-learning classroom and productive homework assignments for any kind of language learner or teacher:
Dual Interactive Subtitles - Lingopie provides subtitles in both English and the target language being learned simultaneously to give users the maximum amount of knowledge needed. Learners can click or hover over the subtitles to access breakdowns, instant translations, and word descriptions, including information about word gender (masculine/feminine) and more.
Video Scripts - Each video comes with a script, allowing learners to follow along with the dialogue and review the text for better understanding and to improve word memorization.
Video Playback Features - Lingopie offers the ability to slow down videos, which can help learners take notes and better understand the content and pronunciation. The auto-pause feature allows for convenient pauses for note-taking or reflection.
Pronunciation Practice - The "Say it" feature enables users to repeat what has been said in the show, providing an opportunity to practice their own pronunciation and repetition. They then have the ability to re-listen to their own voice which is a crucial part of self-assessment.
Quizzes and Flashcards - Lingopie offers quizzes based on words chosen from the subtitles, making it a useful classroom or homework tool. Contextual flashcards allow learners to review vocabulary in the context of the video, aiding recall and understanding of word usage.
Music Videos - Lingopie also includes music videos, allowing learners to engage with songs in the target language, which can enhance listening skills and cultural appreciation.
Compatibility with Netflix - Lingopie has recently begun a collaboration with internationally honoured streaming platform Netflix, meaning that Lingopie and its ground-breaking learning tools can now be used with any Netflix show, expanding the range of available content for successful language learning.
If you aspire to be an engaging and captivating teacher who leaves a lasting impact on your students, incorporating Lingopie into your lessons and homework assignments can be a total game-changer.
By integrating Lingopie into your lessons, you can create a vibrant and dynamic classroom environment where students actively participate and learn in an enjoyable and meaningful way. The engaging content, coupled with the interactive features, ensures that students remain focused, motivated, and enthusiastic about their language learning journey. So, unleash your teaching potential and make your lessons truly captivating with Lingopie!
Popular FAQs
How can I apply TV and film to my language lessons?
As mentioned before, you can initiate a post-viewing discussion and hand out pre-prepared quizzes after watching a show or scene, and ask your student/s to share the quotes and vocabulary that they learnt. You could also use the content from the episode to create role-play scenarios or writing prompts which can also be set as productive homework tasks! Students can act out scenes or write short stories/dialogues incorporating the newly learned language.
What is active learning?
Active learning is intentionally teaching yourself a language opposed to soaking it up subconsciously. TV and movies are effective ways of passively learning due to being a relaxing past time, but they’re also great sources of active learning if you know how to watch them wisely! By consciously digesting a foreign-language show at a slower speed or pausing the video and repeating the words or phrases that you see and hear, you can actively build your vocabulary and practive speaking whenever you choose.
How can I learn a language with Lingopie and Netflix?
Incorporating Netflix shows into your language study routine is a super fun way to improve your speaking, listening, reading and comprehension skills, and stay interested in the language you want to learn! Lingopie has teamed up with Netflix to make learning through TV and movies easier than ever. By using all of the innovative AI-powered tools that Lingopie has to offer alongside popular Netflix series, you can binge-watch your way to fluency in no time.
What languages can I learn with Lingopie?
Lingopie currently offers thousands of hours of content across nine different languages and dialects. You can learn English, Spanish, French, Russian, Portuguese, German, Italian, Korean and Japanese! A Lingopie subscription - and even their free trial - gives you access to over 2,500 shows, as well as a plethora of brilliant translation features and helpful learning tools that are completely unique to Lingopie! Grow your classrom and create the funnest language-learning journey possible with Lingopie.com
