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Good morning
It's the end of October today. I can't quite believe how the year is spinning past. There's a chill in the air, even here in Crete but I'm still busy making videos and I've got a few great ideas for you loosely themed around telling stories, so let's get started.
Something old
It actually doesn't seem that long ago that I made this video, but it's already a year and it's a lovely activity so I thought I'd give it another airing. It's a speaking game called 'Liar, liar!', it's a lot of fun and the preparation is all done for you with a free downloadable worksheet from Twinkl. Great for practising talking about past experiences (present perfect and past simple).
Something new
My new video this week is only rather tangentially connected with stories, although it could be. A few months ago, I discovered a speech-to-text tool called Otter.ai and I've found a whole raft of uses for it in my academic and video work. I've also been thinking about how you could use it with learners and a conversation with Nick Wimshurst (a fellow CELTA trainer) about this prompted me to make a video with some ideas. I hope they're interesting - let me know how you get on if you use them.
Something borrowed
Back to the story telling theme with my 'something borrowed' this week. I love Jamie Keddie's work on videotelling - a technique where you tell the story of a YouTube video, introducing vocabulary as you go along, and then show the video clip at the end. It's a great example of how teacher talk in the class can be used productively for listening practice and vocabulary development.
Recently I came across a TEDx talk that he did way back in 2012. He's a master story teller and this is worth watching (see what vocabulary he seems to be targeting as he goes along). This rendition is perhaps a bit long for class, but will give you the idea of how the technique works. If you want to see the original video he's referring to (Debbie), it's here (with higher level classes, this would make a great discussion about rights to video material on the internet)). And if you want more information and examples of video telling from Jamie, try this.
That's it for this week. Hope that you have a great one and see you next Sunday,
Best
Jo