Digital Video Day
Learning English with Short Movies
by Marcus Grandon
Alpha-Maya Press
Popular Classes, Happy Students
Digital Video Day lessons are fun and easy to teach. The activities open up very engaging discussions, thereby generating situations where learning can take place. They create circumstances where students begin to lose their fear of speaking English and start to use it in a comfortable and native manner. The entertaining lessons have been called intelligent and informative by professors at universities throughout Japan. It is very much edutainment.
The award-winning DVD movies are beautifully shot and expose cultural ideas that trigger conceptual thinking which ease students into positions where they want to speak English. This assigns purpose to language. The movies open a door to a place where opinions, creative thoughts and confidence all spring forth.
Benefits of DVDay Lessons:
-Gets students speaking
-Increases the creative thought process
-Makes speaking English more comfortable
-Triggers positive perceptions about language learning
-Promotes conceptual thinking
-Exposes new cultural ideas
-Lets opinions arise naturally
-Gets students to use what they already know
-Elicits critical thinking
-Gets students laughing
-Creates natural speaking cadence
-Improves confidence
-Disperses the fear of speaking
It All Started. . .
one day in February nearly ten years ago. It was the last day of the semester on a university campus where I was teaching. As the final minutes of the semester approached I asked the students if they would like to see a short four-minute video that I had shot several years prior. They agreed rather excitedly.
It was my first real video project and had been fortunate enough to be chosen as a jury selection in a Hollywood film festival for shorts. Thinking that it was a great wrap to the semester, I played it.
The reaction was astounding to me. During the video there were laughs and other audible signals. When it was over a funny thing happened. They asked to see it again. It certainly made me feel good, and as I created more videos I started to end semesters in this fashion routinely.
Word got out, and new students started to ask me to see the videos. Initially, I made the videos for art’s sake and never thought they had a place in the English classroom. Since the students seemed to enjoy them I began to think about how to use them as teaching material and created accompanying lessons.
The lessons were then tested and piloted extensively. Five years following that original impromptu classroom showing, Digital Video Day was finally launched! There was positive reaction by both students and teachers alike. Before long, teachers requested more of the same kind of material. So I got busy shooting new videos in four countries over a two year period before creating and testing more lessons and Book 2 was released in the fall of 2008.
-Marcus Grandon,
Creator of Digital Video Day
Students Line Up to Use It, Literally
These lessons have proven so popular that students actually line up to get into the class. Students talk. They tell each other about positive experiences. Teachers using this book have experienced a tremendous amount of student interest. In certain instances there is such interest in these lessons that classrooms are often filled beyond capacity. Classrooms literally become standing room only.
Each lesson contains elements of all four language skills. Moreover, the student is trained in the art and skill of communication. The videos themselves are language-less, most being set to instrumental music. Students receive stimulating input via the videos and are asked to find their own way to describe it. They affix their own words to the experience. Watching videos without having to understand a dialogue creates a stress-free time when the videos are being played. Also, students from any cultural background can watch the videos together regardless of which language they speak. They will all go through a similar experience that they will be asked to discuss. Students learn that there are wide varieties of correct patterns for communication. They become empowered to say what they think.
All of the videos were created before any of the English for them was ever written. The foundation lies in thought-provoking video content.
Proud Member of:
What teachers are saying:
What’s Going on Here?
Shibuya New Orleans World Cuisine Athens Music Theater
Environmental Issues Toronto Boston Japanese Festivals
Philadelphia Mediterranean Islands Hawaii Fireworks Airplanes
Detroit Greece Entertainment Transportation Movies Sports
What lies at the root of these lessons are engaging elements of world culture in the form of short, language-less video montages.
Example Themes Found in Books 1 & 2
“These lessons break students out of their routine patterns of speech. Conversations are elicited and students are challenged in a way that they have never seen because they are required to think on their own. There are benefits well beyond the classroom. Finally, a book that’s fun for both students and teachers. We just have a blast!”
-Christopher McClory, Shizuoka University
. . .students feel comfortable with experimenting and the need to be correct is superseded by the desire to be understood. . .
