Pre-Intermediate Level >> Miscellaneous Materials >> Idea for a video lesson. Gives good practice of functional English and makes listening comprehension enjoyable.
Video Bingo.
Pre-Intermediate
This is something that can be done using video in the class, specifically to practice functional or situational English.
Choose a video or video clip in which you know there will be a lot of functional language e.g. inviting, accepting, offering, requesting, etc, etc. So, for example, you could show a clip of people in a bar or restaurant making their orders.
Elicit and practice the relevant language beforehand and then ask students to draw a simple 3 by 3 tic-tac-toe grid on their note books.
As follows:
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Then, getting the students to work in pairs or small groups, ask them to predict the language they are going to hear. It is vital for the teacher to set the scene accurately of the video the students are about to see. In this way, the students will not be guessing blindly. Tell the students that there must be at least three words in their predictions, so they can't just guess 'Yes please' , but 'No thank you' is fine.
Here is an example of a student's prediction grid to give you an idea of the sort of functional language you could target and the number of clues you should give beforehand.
| No, thank you. | I'll have the... | Can we have the... |
| I don't eat meat | And for dessert? | Yes, of course. |
| What would you like... | How would you like... | No, that's all. |
The example situation, as described by the teacher, was 'a couple ordering a meal in a restaurant and the woman is vegetarian.'
If you want, you can employ a simple scoring system whereby the groups get a point for every word in a correct prediction - this would be an incentive for them to guess, for instance, 'can we have the…' and not just 'can we have…'. Or you can stick to classic bingo rules and have wins awarded for lines and full house.
