How To Write Film And Video Activities

We are living in a video age – and so are our students. In 2020, more than 500 hours of video content was uploaded to YouTube every minute. Video has become so widely accepted as the optimum medium for getting information, that YouTube is the second largest search engine. This module looks at how we can use this ‘medium of choice’ to teach English.

With such an embarrassment of riches, the question ‘Where do I find video?’ has been replaced with ‘How do I choose appropriate video?’ Kieran Donaghy and Anna Whitcher lead you through this minefield, providing essential guidance on how to choose exploitable video for the purposes of writing video activities for the ELT classroom. They share their knowledge of the best sources of high-quality video and discuss criteria for selection, such as syllabus fit, language level, length, relevance and task potential. Once you’ve chosen a great video, they’ll show you how to write a variety of activities to exploit it.

Kieran runs the award-winning website Film English, and is also the founder of The Image Conference. Anna is an ELT writer, editor and video producer.

This book forms part of the ELT Teacher 2 Writer training course. The course is designed to help you write better ELT materials, either for publication, or simply to improve the quality of your self-produced classroom materials.


Kieran Donaghy

Kieran is a teacher, trainer and award-winning writer based in Barcelona. He teaches at UAB Idiomes Barcelona part of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He has taught in the UK, Italy, Portugal and Spain. He is an experienced writer. He is the co-author of Films in Health Sciences Education and has a very successful blog on the use of film http://film-english.com which has won numerous awards including Best Individual Blog in the 2011 Edublog Awards and the British Council ELTons award for Innovation in Teaching Resources in 2013. He has Master’s degrees in TEFL, and Business Communication, and has a special interest in the uses of film in education.

Anna Whitcher

Anna studied at the University of California at Berkeley and has a Masters in English from San Francisco State University. She has taught English and Spanish to teenagers and adults in US and European schools. She has worked in applied linguistics research and now writes and edits ELT materials. Her published work includes both print and digital/online materials for Brookemead ELT, Cambridge University Press (USA), Pearson Longman, Marlins ELT, and the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington DC.

Anna Whitcher

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