WORDLESS VIDEOS FOR ELT-2

Worldess Videos for ELT-2

Here’s my second post in the series Silence is Golden, Duct Tape is Silver aka Wordless Videos for ELT sharing more wordless videos that are

short (about 2-4 minutes),
- highly engaging, and
  - appropriate for learners of all levels.

Wordless films are a fantastic resource that may be used as a warm-up before your lesson begins, during the lesson – you may tie them into your lesson topic or use them to give your students a break – or at the end of class to assign a ‘mission’ to your students. The most valuable feature of stories based on wordless videos is that they can be told any number of ways according to your learners’ interpretation of the story and their level of proficiency in English, taking the form of a dialogue, narration, a story told by a particular character, etc. In a way, you will hardly ever feel trapped, going through the same story with the same expressions again and again.

One of the most amazing animated shorts I’ve watched is

Dream – by Zombie Studio

It delivers a powerful message and is a must for any session on kindness, nature and wildlife preservation.

Ask your students to tell the story as one of the four animals facing extinction. There was a time when […], then it all went wrong.

We all have our own battles to fight.

The Battle – Kate Maree O’Brien

Stop the film at 1.35 and ask the students to guess who this person might be.

The film may be used as a springboard to discuss eating disorders or depression caused by fighting through the invisible struggle.

The Apartment – by MUBI

This video essay is like attending a ghost party —you know someone’s there but you can’t see them.

Ask your students to think of their characters and describe what they ‘see’ happening (great for practising continuous forms and modals of deduction).

Now let’s compare and repeat the same process, this time with the characters in place.

Now back to the future.

Artificial Paradise, Inc. – by Jean-Paul Frenay

Storytelling has never been more fascinating. Artificial Paradise, Inc. is a film anticipating a future “where a major corporation has developed a unique software, based on organic virtual reality, which holds all the lost memories of humankind. A user connects to this database of the forgotten…” What is he searching for?

This film never fails with teenage classes. Show the film and ask the students what they think it is about and what the world will look like 50 years from now.

Ask the students to write a synopsis for the story adding as many details as they need.

The next film has left very few people indifferent.

Mr Indifferent – by Aryasb Feiz

Ask the students to write the plot several times, each with a different ending.

And the last wordless film for today shows the ever-existing and ever-returning myth of the generation gap.

Snack Attack – by Eduardo Verastegui

Stop the film at 3:04 and ask the students to tell the story from two different perspectives – as the lad and the granny from the film. Ask them to describe their emotions. Show the ending of the film.