The main goal of language teaching is getting students to communicate. This is why it might sound counterintuitive to use wordless stories and videos as a teaching tool.
However, using wordless visuals as a resource is fantastic for developing students’ creativity and critical thinking skills as well as encouraging ownership of the language. It also lets the teacher choose the target language based on the learners' needs or allows language to emerge organically.
As with most visual resources, the possibilities are endless. One picture story or video can lead to multiple learning opportunities. It is essentially a classroom pick-your-own-adventure!
In this post, I'll give some activity ideas for using wordless videos and stories, such as Ellii's.
Activate schemata
As with most language teaching lessons, this is a good place to start. Schema activation sounds much more technical than it is. Put simply, it’s about helping students to get in the zone and get them thinking about the topic they’ll be discussing.
Showing them a static image from the video, a scene from the wordless story, or the whole story is a good place to start. Then you can ask questions to get them thinking about what they already know about a topic. Here are some warm-up questions from Ellii’s Birthday Celebrations wordless video:
- How are birthdays celebrated in your country of origin?
- What do people often do at birthday parties?
- How would you feel if someone threw you a surprise birthday party?
- Do you like going to school or work on your birthday?
Another great way to activate schemata is by bringing in realia. For example, you could bring in cake, candles, or a present to show the class and generate discussions. If you bring a cake, you get the added benefit of eating it too!
Explore vocabulary
Wordless stories allow students the freedom to share words they know with other students and learn new ones in context as they emerge. Show students the video or pictures and ask them to describe what they see. Support them with any new words and make suggestions for useful language.
Beginner students may use basic nouns while more advanced learners may wish to use more complex adjectives or give more detail. Encourage learners to write down any new words, share ideas, and create example sentences.
You can use Ellii’s online task suggestions to help. Here’s an example from the First Day Picture Story:
Ordering or re-ordering
As students watch a wordless video, you could ask them to take note of all the things that happen. Ask them to share their answers with a partner. To check as a whole class, play the video again, pausing it at key points and inviting students to describe what’s happening. For an additional discussion point, you could ask students to consider what happens before and after the video.
For the wordless stories, set students the challenge of re-ordering the story. Cut each individual image out and give one picture to each student (or two to stronger students, depending on numbers). Tell them not to show their image to anyone else. Then ask them to describe it to the other learners. Their goal is to put the story in order by describing the image they have. Students stand in the order of the story at the end of the activity and retell the story together.
Voiceover, dialogue & role-play
Wordless stories are a perfect blank canvas for adding words! These could be in the form of writing the story, describing it, or writing a voiceover or even the dialogue between each character.
You could have a bit of fun by giving each student one image and asking them to add dialogue. Then put the story together and ask students to read out the captions they wrote for each scene. This can end in hilarity, as the dialogues may be strange or make little sense! As an alternative, boost students’ collaboration skills by asking them to create the dialogue as a class or small group project. Once they have created the dialogue, students can role-play it, record it, or even perform it for other classes.
Targeted or emergent language
Wordless stories are flexible and allow you to cover a range of language structures:
- Present progressive to describe current actions
- Narrative tenses (simple past, past progressive, and past perfect) to describe a past event
Time markers and sequencers such as then, next, after that, once, following, meanwhile, and at the beginning or end also occur naturally in this kind of task. Ask students to share which ones they already know and use them throughout the activities.
Other language that may naturally emerge could be describing places, appearance, or emotions. It’s up to you whether to approach these with a linguistic plan or to go with the flow.
Personalization
As a final task, encourage learners to consider how the theme relates to their own lives. For example, ask learners to share what their first day of school was like, how they celebrate their birthday, or what their favorite wedding traditions are. The Ellii online tasks offer some ideas here.
You can access our Wordless Videos and Stories in our Visual Learning section.
You may also like these visual-learning-themed blog posts:
There are no comments on this post. Start the conversation!