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Video Notes

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Revision as of 15:58, 27 October 2018 by Marcos Benevides (talk | contribs)


Course Video

The course video in Widgets Inc. is at a near-authentic language level, and serves several purposes in the context of the course:

1. It models language and situations for students. This is especially true of the sample task videos, in which the stage tasks are literally performed. Lower language proficiency students may want to follow these models almost word-for-word by modifying to the script, but higher proficiency students should be able to look at them as simply one possible way of doing things. In fact, the latter group may want to discuss the good and bad points of these task videos – certainly none is 100% flawless!

2. It helps to develop the authentic context of the course simulation. That is, it helps make the students "feel" like they are in a real workplace. This is why we have added certain features in the video which you may not expect (for example, Titus having recurring technical problems). Another aspect of authenticity is that the characters display a certain degree of realistic personality, both good and bad aspects. Students may like or dislike the boss, but at least they should feel like 3-dimensional human beings rather than simplistic caricatures as in many other learning videos.

3. It provides opportunities for discussion, note-taking, and other classroom activity. This is especially true of the conference-call videos in which "the boss" is addressing the teams directly. It is important to bear in mind that students are not required to understand the videos 100%. They are meant to watch, take notes, then turn to each other and ask, "What did the boss say?", "What does she want us to do next?", and so on. In other words, the immediate post-viewing activity, ideally, is one in which students are working together to try to reconstruct the message. (After this, of course, the teacher could then focus on language aspects, direct students to read the script, watch again to reinforce, and so on.)


Other Videos

We encourage teachers (with appropriate permissions) to upload videos of their students successfully performing tasks. Eventually, as the wiki grows, we hope to begin categorizing these as examples at different CEFR levels (A1-C2).

Video files cannot be uploaded directly to this wiki. They need to be linked or embedded from a streaming source such as Vimeo or YouTube. If you have a sample video you wish to share, but don't know how to do this, please contact us.