FluentU - learning expressions in authentic videos

Introduction

    It is commonly believed that L2 should better be learned in real context so that many language teachers have tried to encourage learners to improve English out of class by watching authentic materials like films, TV series and other video clips. Its benefits are obvious such as the multimodal way of learning strengthens learners memory helps them acquire correct pronunciation. However, such practice often falls short due to various reasons such as the difficulty of finding materials of suitable language level, good subtitles, or that students often shift their attention from language learning to how the story is going in the film or drama and get addicted, which is quite often the case that both parents and the teacher worry about. 

Here comes FluentU, a website specifically designed for language learners, which solves quite a lot of these problems. You can have your students find more than one thousand videos categorised by the level of difficulty, topic of interests and video formats (such as trailers, speeches, news, etc.). What is brilliant is that when the video is playing, move just move your cursor down to the area of subtitles, the video will stop automatically. Then you can check the meaning of any words or expressions in the subtitle by just moving your cursor there. That easy! (see picture)

Each video is not long, so the workload is not heavy and absolutely possible for students to pay full attention. They can watch one video again and again, checking every word and expression in subtitles if they like. After watching, they can choose to learn by clicking 'Learn'. An interface will appear (see picture)

in which there is a key word or expression, its definition, two example sentences and a picture (no picture in this example). You can also get any definition of words in the example sentences by moving your cursor there. After learning this word, you can click either 'Already know' or 'Next' to move on to the next word/expression. Some quiz questions like multiple choice or filling in the blank will appear to strengthen your memory of words/expressions learned before. If some errors are made, the words/expressions will be automatically stored in one place (see picture), users of upgraded account can learn those words again.

The progress record of each video watched will be shown as well as word count in each one.

One more thing

    Now, you may probably want to go to the website, try it out, and tell your students. Please just allow me to present one more thing before you click the link below. 

It is quite a good idea to use this to flip you classroom by asking students to watch some videos at home and solve their problems when they come to class and the videos you choose can also relate to the topics or language points you have taught or are going to teach. However, it can also be good if you give students freedom to choose what they enjoy to watch and occasionally check their progress (checking their notes for example) in order to help to build their autonomy.

FluentU: http://www.fluentu.com/english/