Freedocumentaries - watch, learn and uderstand

The most common belief about teenagers and young adults you come across these days is that they are easily bored, spoilt and not interested in anything.

It is very difficult to make them express opinions and engage in debates as they have, sadly, very little to say. Sounds familiar?

With the communicative approach knocking on the door of every EFL classroom, it has become extremely hard for teachers to come up with intriguing and captivating material that would eventually make students open their minds and mouths.

A few years ago I was working on a summer camp teaching English to adolescents from various backgrounds. Some of them came from broken families, some from very well off ones. Yet they all had something in common – they did not want to speak English and take part in discussion me any my colleagues were laboriously preparing.

The theme of the camp was Travelling broadens the mind and we really wanted the kids to learn something about the world. Unfortunately, interesting (in our opinion) articles about different countries, colourful pictures of fascinating (for us) places, games and group work did not work for them at all.

We spent hours searching the internet but in the end we found what seemed to be perfect. www.freedocumentaries.org is a website featuring a lot of free and full length documentaries touching upon a great deal of controversial issues. As my students were doing a project about India, we watched ‘Born into Brothels’, a wonderful film about children of prostitutes from Calcutta, whose lives changed after learning how to take photographs. And yes, it worked this time! More than that, it worked like magic!!!

I still have not seen all the documentaries on the website but there are some definitely worth recommending:

·        ‘Born into Brothels’ (take a look at http://kids-with-cameras.org/home/ and use it as an extension to the film)

·        ‘Invisible Children’ about children suffering as a result of abduction during the war in Uganda (also see http://www.invisiblechildren.com/home.php)

·        ‘Jesus Camp’ about religious camps for kids in the US

·        ‘Super Size Me’ about an experiment conducted to prove that eating fast food is harmful

·        ‘Ghosts of Rwanda’ about a civil war in the country

·        ‘India. The Land of Missing Children’ about kids kidnapped and sold as slaves to carpet factories

Be sure that seeing documentaries from www.freedocumentaries.org will enliven your classrooms. They are shocking, thought provoking and will stimulate a great deal of productive discussions. 

Jug, jug, jug, Videojug

With http://www.youtube.com/ blocked in Turkey, teachers are left with a minimal number of websites offering videos to use in their classrooms.



There is one website, however, that I am particularly fond of. Having come across it by chance, http://www.videojug.com/ turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.


There are ten thematically organised categories (Beauty&Style, Creative&Culture, Family&Education, Food&Drink, Health&Wellbeing, Lifestyle&Home, Love&Dating, Money&Careers, Sports&Outdoors, Technology&Cars) each including a vast amount of videos.


Most of them are pretty short, ranging from 1 to 5 minutes and some are clearly inappropriate for kids. That is why make sure that you watch a video before showing it to your students.


What are the advantages of using www.videojug.com in the ESL classroom?

• Videos collected there are an inexhaustible source of authentic language use provided in a compact, concise form

• It is a chance to introduce new, interesting vocabulary or phrases

• Because the videos are short, students are left with no time to get bored while watching them

• The website contains videos to match almost any topic you discuss in the classroom

• Bearing the Multiple Intelligences theory in mind, a video watched in the classroom increases the learning abilities of Visual and Auditory students


How can we make use of the videos in the classroom?

• Let students simply watch. It might be a great opportunity to introduce a topic and set up a context relevant to the lesson you are planning to teach

• Watching something controversial or surprising might be a starting point for a productive discussion

• They may watch and simply answer some questions provided by the teacher

• Students might take notes and later compare them with a partner

• Use it as a dictogloss – the students first watch and listen, then listen and take notes, after that compare with a partner and produce a final version of what was being told

• Students can write a summary of what they have seen

• You may choose two similar videos and ask students to pinpoint similarities and differences

• Try to play only the sound, the students have to imagine and visualise what takes place in the video (what the speaker looks like, what the location and time of the day are); allow time for checking if their guesses were correct

I used http://www.videojug.com/ with my 4th graders last year when we were talking about cooking and practised writing recipes. Having watched quite a lot of videos, they were supposed to write about and present an interesting recipe of a dish they like. The outcome was amazing!