I know a lot of us teach novice learners and that sometimes it can be hard to find listening activities for them that are accessible to novices AND fit into a topic we want them to listen to. You’ll find a great video and then they can only understand like..10 seconds of it.
Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely times for the inclusion of authentic resources (#authres) in your novice level classes, and there are most definitely tasks you can ask them to do that are more appropriate for their levels! I just think that you need to provide balance (as with all things in life).
The Idea:
Laura Sexton aka SraSpanglish started this Flipgrid for novices (see her post here) and I LOVE THIS IDEA so much. There are already 14 videos there, but what if each one of us took a minute to add a video?! Could you imagine?!
The topics she’d like to collect videos on:
-food likes/dislikes
-local/free time activities
-favorite travel destinations
(how perfect for novices, right??)
Seriously.
Here’s the link.
Now that you know it exists, what can you do?
Well, first of all, sit your butt down on your couch, or while you’re waiting in the drive-through for your Starbucks take out your phone and submit a video. Heck, record two! The more the merrier.
Next, you can try it out with your classes! It’s great for our Spanish students to hear someone other than us speaking, and there’s a good variety there. Below, I included a screenshot of one of the ways we’ve used this in class. I set up a Google Form with some simple questions and directed them to the video they should listen to.
I caught a few of them listening to other videos for fun, just because they were curious. HA! Win. They thought they were being sneaky and doing what they weren’t supposed to, but how can I be mad about them intentionally spending more time listening to Spanish?!
Come join the Flipgrid fiesta and help build a library of resources to use with our students. The more videos we have, the more resources we’ll have to choose from. Just think of the possibilities!