Designing multimodal activities for language students

Busy? Same here. 

I was working on a new set of multimodal tasks for assessment, but, as usually happens, I came up with something extra – a new idea to add to my favourite set of activities on idioms (see Idioms in Close-Up). Just like with the Role-Play generator, this idea popped up mid-process, and it turned out to be a great addition!

Riddles.

Idioms.

Riddlioms.

So, what’s a riddliom? It’s basically a fun little riddle about an idiom but with a twist. Each riddliom tells a short story that captures the meaning of the idiom, along with an image or animation that helps bring it to life.

I often use ‘espresso’ stories and dialogues in my teaching, so I thought – why not use the same approach for idioms? My idea was to take each idiom’s definition and turn it into a short story, highlighting the keywords that really capture its essence. It’s a fun and creative way for learners to connect with the language, and makes idioms a bit easier to remember too.

To pull together all the media I needed, I set up a workflow with several AI tools (and yes, you can recreate this process using individual tools if you want). I used a large language model to come up with six-word stories and generate prompts for a text-to-image model, which then created the images in the style I wanted. Next, I used a text-to-speech model to add voiceovers to my short stories and connected an image-to-video model to animate the images.

Finally, I put everything together in Canva to create short, interactive challenge videos for Upper-Intermediate/Advanced students.

Here’s the series of videos, each featuring five thematically connected riddlioms.

Part 1 – Shared Understanding: To be on the same wavelength; to break the ice; to see eye to eye; to be on the same page; and to build bridges.

Part 2 – Secrets: To let the cat out of the bag; to be a fly on the wall; to spill the beans; a skeleton in the closet; and my lips are sealed.

Part 3 – Cognitive Bias: To turn a blind eye; an elephant in the room; to bury one’s head in the sand; to jump on the bandwagon; and to dig one’s heels in.

Part 4 – Thinking processes: To think outside the box; to play by ear; to ring a bell; to walk a tightrope; and to go down the rabbit hole.

How to use riddlioms as a learning resource:

  1. Play the video: Each video includes an animated hint and a short story that summarises the idiom’s meaning.

  2. Pause for guessing: When the video hits the question mark (❓), pause and encourage your learners to guess the idiom based on the clues.

  3. Check the answer: After discussing their guesses, resume the video to reveal the correct answer.

Since many of the short stories and animated images in the riddlioms reference the idioms’ etymology, encourage your students to explore the origins and cultural context behind these expressions. They might uncover some really interesting stories!

Follow-up: Ask your students to choose an idiom, create their own short story and image, and challenge other teams to guess the idiom. Or, they could focus on writing a 6-word story or creating an image that represents the idiom’s meaning.

Happy creating and happy guessing!

3 Comments

  1. Hello Sveltlana! How fun are riddlioms! Thank you for posting your workflow. It’s a little hard for me to see it, but perhaps I can make it bigger. In any event, I was wondering…you mentioned that you used a couple of different AI tools. Would you mind sharing what you used, especially to generate the text to image and audio? Also, you said you used this lesson with your intermediate to advance English learner students. Are they adults or kids? I’m definitely inspired and plan to use your resources and will be sure to cite you. Thank you for coming up with great engaging learning resources!!
    -Mary Eileen McDonnell

    • Hello, Mary Eileen! Aww, thank you! The workflow is an automated flow within the app I built, where I connected all the models I needed into a ‘one-stop’ app. It’s still a work in progress, but feel free to give it a try here: https://share.imagica.ai/?q=5e426bf5-9034-45c8-8d37-4d7fdade1dec . Voice and video take time to load smoothly, so I’ve turned those off for now until they’re a bit more developed. The app doesn’t always produce consistent results so I still use individual platforms for some assets. For images (text-to-image), I’m using Flux. You can try it on PicLumen (the Flux model; the PicLumen realistic model is also worth exploring). For sound (text-to-speech), Elevenlabs works best. If you want to add emphasis or adjust sentence stress, pick a voice you like and then use their voice changer tool. Video generators are still a mixed bag. Luma Labs generally does a good job, but it’s often crowded, which means a lot of waiting. I quite like Krea and Hailuo. For some riddlioms, I just created simple animations in old good Canva)
      I used the riddlioms with my young adult group (ages 19-23), but they should work well with teens too. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

  2. You’re a genius. I will try to check out your app. Thank you so much for sharing. Please continue to share and create! I can’t wait to see what you come up with next. I just came across your work, so I’m planning on exploring your blog to get caught up. Have a great weekend! -Mary Eileen McDonnell

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