How to motivate and engage students with authentic video

Sue Kay
A teacher holding a tablet in a classroom with students around her also looking at the tablet smiling
Reading time: 4 minutes

Sue Kay has been an ELT materials writer for over 25 years. She is the co-author of app's Focus Second Edition and is one of the co-founders of . In this article, Sue takes us through her experience of using video in the classroom and shows us how to motivate and engage students with authentic video.

Videos are no longer a novelty

When I started teaching in the early 80s, video was a novelty in the classroom. We only had one video player for the whole school and had to book it a week in advance. There was very little published material available, but thanks to the rarity factor, the students lapped it up.

There was no problem with getting them motivated, even if the lessons accompanying the videos were not particularly exciting and consisted mainly of comprehension questions. Lucky for me, our school had a very dynamic Director of Studies who gave great teacher training sessions and I was very taken with a presentation he did on active viewing tasks.

I was, and still am, a big fan of the Communicative Approach and I embraced the more interactive video tasks enthusiastically: freeze frame and predict, watch with the sound down and guess what people are saying, listen with the screen hidden to guess the action, etc.

When I’m preparing a video lesson, I still try to include at least one of these activities because the information gap provides an ideal motivation for students to watch the video and check their ideas.

Motivating students with video
Play
Privacy and cookies

By watching, you agree app can share your viewership data for marketing and analytics for one year, revocable by deleting your cookies.

Is video a good motivational tool to use in the classroom today?

In the old days, video could motivate and engage a class because it was something relatively new, but what about nowadays when video has gradually moved from a ‘nice-to-have’ element of new courses to a ‘must-have’?

We teachers have unlimited access to videos, either those that accompany our course or on the internet. But has this affected motivation? Has video also become harder to use as a motivating factor in the classroom?

Yes and no.

Teenagers have grown up with a smartphone in their hand. They live their lives through video - filming themselves or one another, uploading and sharing video content on TikTok or other similar platforms, accessing YouTube on a variety of devices, and even aspiring to be like the YouTubers they spend hours and hours watching.

The importance of this to the way we teach is summed up by this quote from The Age of the Image, “We can’t learn or teach what we can’t communicate – and increasingly that communication is being done through visual media.”

Video is the ideal medium for teaching 21st-century skills and visual literacy. None of my students bat an eyelid when I ask them to make a video for homework, film themselves telling an anecdote, watch a grammar explanation online, or do some online research.

But in terms of what we watch in class, our videos need to work harder than before. In my experience, students won’t tolerate boring or unnatural videos, just because they’re in English. Because they watch so many online films, documentaries and series, students are used to high production values, strong narratives and authentic material.

What makes a motivating and engaging video?

When we were writing the second edition of Focus, we were lucky enough to have access to the BBC archives. However, just because something has appeared on the BBC it doesn’t mean it is suitable for our students. In my experience, there are certain criteria that needs to be fulfilled in order to motivate and engage students with video.

The wow factor

First of all, it helps if a video has a visual wow factor. This may be an unusual setting or a location with breathtaking scenery. If there’s no visual interest, you may as well do an audio lesson. However, stunning places and incredible landscapes won’t hold the students’ interest for very long.

Relatability

There also has to be something in the video that the student can relate to their own lives. For instance, one of the clips we chose for Focus Second Edition is set in an amazing place in Turkey, popular with tourists who visit in hot air balloons. The students are unlikely to have visited this place, but to make it relatable and interesting for students, we chose an extract that focuses on the caves that older generations still inhabit, while the younger generation have moved to the nearby cities. The topic of young people leaving the countryside for the big city is a topic that will be familiar anywhere in the world.

An inspiring story

A generation that have access to endless TV series and films on demand expect a good story. While this can be an episode from a drama - it doesn’t have to be fiction. It can be an inspiring story of human achievement or any kind of human-interest story that follows a journey and has a story arc.

Social relevance

Generation Z and Alpha tend to be very socially engaged and open-minded; they want to change the world. So videos that air social issues are ideal as stimulus for discussion. For example, in Focus Second Edition we’ve included a video clip about a project that’s underway in Holland, where students can have low-priced accommodation in a Care Home in return for some help with the elderly residents. In class, we’ve used this video clip as a springboard for discussing relationships across generations.

Why are these types of video more motivating?

Videos that fulfil these criteria raise motivation in class because they facilitate more interesting lessons. If the video is visually engaging, it’s easier to write the active viewing tasks I mentioned earlier. If the topic is relatable on some level, the lesson can include personalization and discussion, which wouldn’t work if the content was so far removed from the students’ reality that they have nothing to say about it.

I’m particularly keen on videos that are engaging enough to facilitate follow-up tasks that might spark the students’ imagination and help to put them in other people’s shoes. For example, in Focus Second Edition, we’ve included a video about window cleaners on the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world.

As you can imagine, the film shots are breathtaking and have not only the wow factor but the ‘agh factor’ too for people who are afraid of heights. The presenter, Dallas, joins the experienced window cleaners, and you can’t help but hold your breath as he climbs out onto the side of the building, which is a sheer drop of 800 meters below him. No wonder he has a dry mouth.

The short clip is so engaging that the lesson practically writes itself. Here are a couple of examples of follow-up tasks that are only possible because the video holds the students’ attention and ignites their imagination:

After you watch

  • You are Dallas and you want to learn more about the daily routine of the window cleaners at the Burj Khalifa. In pairs, decide on a list of five questions you want to ask the window cleaners about their job.
  • Imagine that you are Dallas and write an article about your work experience on the tallest building in the world.

All this increased volume and choice of video is great, and video certainly still has the power to motivate our students, but I believe we teachers and materials providers need to focus more on the quality of the videos we use in class than the quantity.

Read our posts '21st-century skills and the English language classroom' and 'Key challenges in secondary education'.

Bibliography

  • Apkon, S. (2013) The Age of the Image. Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • DLA. Digitallearningassociates.com
  • Donaghy, Kieran (2015) Film in Action. Delta Publishing
  • Goldstein, Ben. & Driver, Paul. (2015) Language Learning with Digital Video. Cambridge University Press
  • Keddie, Jamie. and .
  • Donaghy, K & Whitcher A., , ELT Teacher 2 Writer

More blogs from app

  • A Teacher sat with a child at a desk in a classroom helping them with their writing,

    5 ways to support students with dyslexia

    By Anna Hasper

    Children seem to be starting English lessons younger than ever, often before they can even read and write. This means that learning differences like dyslexia may not have yet made themselves apparent.

    While it’s not a language teacher’s role to diagnose specific learning needs, it is important for us to monitor our young learner students’ progress. If we think a student might be showing signs of dyslexia (or another learning difference), we should feel comfortable referring parents to the right place early on. This can make a huge difference in the learning process.

    There are many forms of dyslexia and it affects students in various ways. However, some may include the following:

    • having difficulty reading (especially aloud)
    • struggling with spelling
    • problems remembering the sequence of things
    • finding it hard to follow instructions
    • misbehaving or disrupting the class
    • being very quiet or shy (especially when doing reading or writing activities)
    • falling asleep in class.

    Dyslexia is not a learning disability; it’s a learning difference.

    What do Magic Johnson, Richard Branson and Tom Cruise have in common? They all have dyslexia. So learners with dyslexia are certainly not less capable; in fact, they often excel in spatial thinking and creativity. The difference is that their brain works differently, so they find visual processing and using their working memory challenging. For example, they may struggle to remember what was said and face challenges when trying to link sounds to letters.

    The most common issues are related to reading, spelling and writing, but dyslexia can also impact concentration span and planning skills. And all these challenges have a severe impact on learners’ self-esteem.

    Providing effective learning opportunities for young learners with dyslexia might require teachers to reframe how they see dyslexia. Avoid seeing it as a dis-ability, but rather as a form of neurodiversity: the brain functions and learns in different ways.

    Creating the conditions for learning

    Many – if not most – young learner teachers feel they are not appropriately trained to deal effectively with learners who have dyslexia in a classroom context.

    In an ideal world, all EAL and mainstream teachers would receive in-depth training to better deal with neurodiversity in the classroom. But for now, let’s explore some modifications that help create a more enabling learning environment in which all learners – with or without dyslexia – can progress.

    1. Getting to know them

    If we want all learners to progress to their next level, we need to get to know them. Only then can we provide learning opportunities that start where they are. Get to know their strengths, weaknesses and interests as well as their learning profile; where do they like to work, who do they work well with and what kinds of tasks engage them fully? These are the starting principles of differentiated teaching and all learners will profit from you taking the time to get to know them beyond their name.

    Top tip:

    Observations are an extremely useful tool to gain insight into learners’ levels and learning preferences. My favorite activity is to get young learners to create a personal profile.

    This can be done in their first language – at home with parents – or as a shared writing activity in class. You provide the stem sentences, and learners complete them with drawings or words. You can hang the profiles on the wall and use them to start talking about ‘differences and similarities’. Alternatively, you can have a learner present their buddy to the class based on their profile, depending on the level and age you teach.

    2. Creating a collaborative culture in the classroom

    If we want learners to help each other in class, we need to create a culture of ‘helping hands’. Focusing on developing good relationships in your classroom, between you and the learners but also between learners, is vital for a collaborative culture. Use activities that focus on building understanding through sharing ideas. Integrating collaborative learning activities will help to establish supportive relationships and makes struggling learners feel more confident in the classroom. They know they can first talk things through with others and ask them for help before completing a task independently. This will benefit all learners, not only learners with dyslexia.

    Top tip:

    Think-pair-share is a well-known collaborative activity and can easily be adapted to include some movement too in the form of HuSuPuWu!

    This activity will help learners share ideas and allow for differentiated thinking time. Ask your young learners a question you want them to respond to, give them thinking time and tell them to put their hand up when they are ready to talk (Hu).

    Encourage them to look around, find another person with their hand up and stand up (Su) to walk over and pair up (Pu).

    Together they share ideas before returning to their place and writing up their ideas (Wu).

    This will be especially beneficial for students who need more time to process, love to move and want to get confirmation or support.

    3. Providing multi-sensory tasks and activities

    Providing multi-sensory activities is already common practice in most young learner classrooms. It allows learners to process information using their stronger senses while strengthening their weaker areas.

    Multi-sensory teaching (MST) acknowledges that all brains learn in unique, different ways and is a well-known method used when working with dyslexic students in their mother tongue. So instead of only telling the story, find images that illustrate the events, draw a story path for learners to follow, or get them to visualize the story.

    Doing this increases the ‘routes of memory’ as Kormos (2017) calls it, and enables information to reach the brain via different pathways, visual and auditory, which strengthen the message.

    Top tip:

    When learning new words, break them into syllables by clapping when you say them. Then show the word and break it up visually (e.g. fri-end), and get them to make the word with playdough or in shaving foam as they say it. Get them to keep saying it as they write it and then check it.

    4. Setting clear, manageable instructions

    Because dyslexia often impacts working memory, following instructions can be even more challenging than it already is for young learners. We need to reduce the processing load by breaking up instructions into manageable, achievable steps.

    Focusing on just a small amount of information better enables learners with dyslexia (Kormos & Smith, 2012) and to be honest, all young learners – and our classroom management – can benefit from this.

    Also, check whether you need to ‘tell’ it or can you ‘show’ the instructions? Presenting instructions in a multisensory way where you, for example, use the whiteboard to visualize the instructions, and use gestures and body language to support your oral input will facilitate understanding.

    Top tip:

    Learners benefit from talking things through as talk plays an integral part in meaning-making. So why not get learners to turn to their elbow buddy and repeat what they need to do in their own words? Another effective way would be to record the instructions so they can listen back as many times as they need.

    5. Adapting your materials

    Being aware of what works best for the unique brains of learners with dyslexia allows us to tweak existing materials to make learning more accessible. Think about the color of paper you copy on or the background color of your slides. Learners with dyslexia cope better with colored backgrounds as it reduces word blurring. When learning to write new words in their workbook, use a highlighter to highlight the area between the middle lines where the body of the letters needs to be written.

    Top tip:

    Nowadays, many young learner coursebooks have audio resources available, but not always for readers or stories. Use assistive technology to get the selected reading text recorded. Struggling readers can listen to the audio as they read the text alone. In this way, they will feel that they are reading independently whilst working on letter sound correlation as well as the rhythm of the language.

    The English language classroom can be stressful for learners with specific learning needs. Now, we don’t need to – and can’t – ‘fix’ learners, but we should try to ‘fix’ the environment and provide an enabling, inclusive learning environment for all. By tweaking our teaching, we might better enable learners who face challenges, ensure they feel supported in their learning and allow them to bloom in our classroom.