2 thoughts on “Youtube and the language classroom”
Gretchen, I really appreciated your specificity of the use of YouTube in the Language classroom. I was able to relate this to my own experience in French classrooms, and found that it corroborated quite nicely with your own research; though not proficient in French, I recall that throughout my entire 8 years of learning French, my teachers and professors would incorporate YouTube videos of conjugations and French speakers/music videos/culture to engage us, and I have found, in retrospect, that the classes that incorporated more videos tended to be the ones I remember better. Not only did I learn more about authentic French culture from being able to access these videos (I learned who Yannick Noah was, about French politics, French landscape, French poetry, etc.), but as you mentioned, I was not just limited to my professor or teacher’s French accent, voice, and dialect. In some French classes, particularly during high school, my teachers would engage us in oral performance by prompting us to create YouTube videos, which allowed us to expand our creativity beyond the boring usual oral conversation exam, also giving us the opportunity to hone our technology/digital proficiencies. The down side of these sort of assignments was obviously, as you mentioned, the discomfort of being completely Internet public, which brings with it negative feedback (getting made fun of for anything from your lack of scripting creativity, which, come on, it’s another language, to your outfits, to being fat). My teachers usually allowed us to make these videos private so as to protect our fragile adolescent self-concepts and mediate the aforementioned issues. Overall though, I agree with your views; especially in a Language classroom, I think that YouTube is an extremely valuable asset because it can transport you from 7 East 12th Street to the Champs Élysées with the click of a button.
Gretchen, I agree with you that Youtube could bring more authentic and diverse material and information to language teaching classrooms. I have had a number of classes during which my teachers showed Youtube videos. I think it is also a great way to connect with adolescents since they are more familiarised with it. What’s also important, like you mentioned is to bring to students the rist of using Youtube concerning posting vedios of themselves or any others. My only concern is that there are countries like China that don’t have access to Youtube and teachers who wish to use such materials have to go through so much trouble in order to get it. I know there is no one solution to this, but if there’s any other social media platform that could serve similar purposes as Youtube that anyone could bring up is more than helpful to such situations. Thank you very much for your time!
Gretchen, I really appreciated your specificity of the use of YouTube in the Language classroom. I was able to relate this to my own experience in French classrooms, and found that it corroborated quite nicely with your own research; though not proficient in French, I recall that throughout my entire 8 years of learning French, my teachers and professors would incorporate YouTube videos of conjugations and French speakers/music videos/culture to engage us, and I have found, in retrospect, that the classes that incorporated more videos tended to be the ones I remember better. Not only did I learn more about authentic French culture from being able to access these videos (I learned who Yannick Noah was, about French politics, French landscape, French poetry, etc.), but as you mentioned, I was not just limited to my professor or teacher’s French accent, voice, and dialect. In some French classes, particularly during high school, my teachers would engage us in oral performance by prompting us to create YouTube videos, which allowed us to expand our creativity beyond the boring usual oral conversation exam, also giving us the opportunity to hone our technology/digital proficiencies. The down side of these sort of assignments was obviously, as you mentioned, the discomfort of being completely Internet public, which brings with it negative feedback (getting made fun of for anything from your lack of scripting creativity, which, come on, it’s another language, to your outfits, to being fat). My teachers usually allowed us to make these videos private so as to protect our fragile adolescent self-concepts and mediate the aforementioned issues. Overall though, I agree with your views; especially in a Language classroom, I think that YouTube is an extremely valuable asset because it can transport you from 7 East 12th Street to the Champs Élysées with the click of a button.
Gretchen, I agree with you that Youtube could bring more authentic and diverse material and information to language teaching classrooms. I have had a number of classes during which my teachers showed Youtube videos. I think it is also a great way to connect with adolescents since they are more familiarised with it. What’s also important, like you mentioned is to bring to students the rist of using Youtube concerning posting vedios of themselves or any others. My only concern is that there are countries like China that don’t have access to Youtube and teachers who wish to use such materials have to go through so much trouble in order to get it. I know there is no one solution to this, but if there’s any other social media platform that could serve similar purposes as Youtube that anyone could bring up is more than helpful to such situations. Thank you very much for your time!