Chelsea Hotel's Uncertain Future 

If you want to learn more about the world-famous Chelsea Hotel and its future, watch this video and answer the given comprehension questions: 

Chelsea Hotel

In order to prepare my listening task with Edpuzzle, I decided to use a video about Chelsea Hotel and its uncertain future. Taken as it is from a BBC documentary, I chose it in the hope that my students would find it appealing and interesting enough. Also, something I took into account when selecting this specific video was the topic it deals with: right now my students are learning about travelling and tourism (including subtopics like accommodation), so I felt that this video matched our needs.  

The main objectives set for this task include: to listen for specific detail, to develop top-down and bottom-up strategies, to promote autonomous learning, to widen vocabulary related to the topic dealt with, and to learn about the world-famous Chelsea Hotel.      

As a pre-listening activity, I wrote the expression “Hotel Chelsea” on the board and elicited information about it from my students, as a brainstorming activity. While listening to their ideas, I wrote on the board any relevant expressions and interesting vocabulary items that they used. After that, I asked them to watch this video at home and do the listening comprehension task I prepared.

The part that students most liked was watching the video at home and being able to pause it, read the given comprehension questions or focus on a specific fragment that they might have found difficult as many times as they needed to. This way, they actually benefited from autonomous learning.         

We checked together the answers to this listening task in class, in our next English session. After that, as a post-listening activity, I asked them to reflect on what they learned about Chelsea Hotel, and to make predictions about its future.

To improve this task, I think next time I’d provide my students with the solutions to the comprehension questions, so that they can check them at home. This would save me more time and I could focus on other questions in class.     

Comentarios

Publicar un comentario

Entradas populares de este blog

Reflecting on my Reading Habits

The pictures shared on the platform show us people reading in different contexts, and apparently different materials. In picture 4, primary students are reading what seem to be the books – perhaps graded readers – they have been assigned in class. In this case, therefore, their teacher might have chosen the book for them. The people appearing in the other pictures, in contrast, are reading books (an e-book, actually, in picture 3; and a newspaper in picture 5) which have probably been chosen by themselves.       From what I can gather, I’d say that the readers in picture 1 might be feeling relaxed and engaged in their reading, as they are sitting on comfortable armchairs in the quiet and peaceful atmosphere that a library usually offers. The readers in picture 2 could be feeling curiosity and “connection”, since they are both sharing the same book and seem to be discovering something new together. In pictures 3 and 5, I think that reading offers these people the opportunity to i
Leer más

A Genial Approach to Speaking Practice through the Use of Genial.ly

ORGANIZING THE PROJECT:    In order to do this task, I asked my students to work in pairs throughout the whole process. Primary or secondary teachers as most of them are, I thought it would be a good idea to give them freedom to choose the topics for their oral presentations; so, that’s what I did. This way, they could feel more comfortable talking about a topic or subject they were familiar with, which could in turn boost their motivation.       I started by explaining them the final aim of this task, which was to prepare just the beginning of an oral presentation on a specific subject, and to present it to the whole class. I emphasized the fact that they were expected to take into consideration a series of important elements generally involved in public speaking (apart from content and form), such as body language, intonation, pauses, and the use of visual aids to make it easier for the audience to understand and follow their speech. Here, I introduced Genial.ly as the to
Leer más

Getting inspiration

Getting inspiration from the Edpuzzle activity created by Alicia and published on her blog, I’ve decided to create a new task, based on the same video she used ( https://alicerof.blogspot.com/2020/03/ )            I think the video in itself could be quite appealing to my students, given the topic it deals with and also its authenticity. So, to start with, I’d make my students brainstorm on the concept of “bullying”, eliciting their answers and trying to detect any possible wrong ideas or misconceptions. Then, I’d ask my students to listen to the song by Bars & Melody, and making use of Edpuzzle, to answer some comprehension questions related to its lyrics. Finally, I’d make my students do some research on the treatment and handling of bullying situations in schools located in different English-speaking countries, thus raising awareness of the need for measures to be taken to combat this social problem.       
Leer más