Students make great videos - with French subtitles

As teachers, we like to give our students real-world tasks to make their learning more memorable. Every year, Guillaume Gravé's Grade 9 French foreign language class produces some great films of interviews with people about their work - complete with subtitles. In the video below, you will see several clips from this year's interviews (though nothing so spectacular as last year's interview with our Prime Minister).


The activity is firmly anchored in language learning and uses technology in the form of camera, tablet or smartphone and the constantly evolving functions of YouTube. It is all very easy and the tech enhances rather than hinders the language acquisition. If you would like to try this with one of your classes (whether language or otherwise), read on below this short video of clips from the students' interviews ...

There are several ways to add subtitles to a video, but the best I have ever seen is within YouTube. YouTube allows you to listen to a speaker and then to type what is said while the video pauses until you are ready for the next sentence. In my experience, it takes 3 minutes to type a minute of speaking. The students learn to use it very quickly. For the learners, there is intense exposure to the target language.

In terms of SAMR, this is an activity that allows students to engage with a real-world task. The videos are on YouTube whose flexible privacy settings mean that the teacher can control exactly who can see the video. The teacher can easily manage the viewing so that the students receive constructive feedback from an authentic audience, whether peers, parents or another class.

If you would like to try an activity like this with one of your classes, please get in touch with Matt or Steve.