The author, Mokhamad Syaifudin has been an English teacher for both secondary and tertiary level for almost 12 years. He is a CALL teacher practitioner and Master Teacher Trainer who works on an Australian-Indonesian project serving almost 700 schools in Indonesia to train secondary school English teachers.
The paper done by Mokhamad Syaifudin dwells on video sharing websites’ potential as authentic sources for learning materials. The paper focuses on how to make use of video sharing websites and use them in the classroom settings. Here, the paper acts as a discussion to help teachers who wants to incorporate the use of videos in classrooms. The matters that are discussed in the paper includes information on video sharing websites, the criteria when selecting video materials, where to get videos, how to save videos, the media used to display videos and most importantly, how to use video in the classroom for language learning activities.
This paper interests me for a number of reasons. First of all, it interests me because it gives further elaboration and description on how to use videos in classrooms. What I like about the paper is that it discusses some of the issues that most teachers tend to overlook such as ‘what to consider when selecting video materials’, which included the video’s cultural appropriateness, the video’s requirements based on learners’ needs, video clip length and so on.
Secondly, the paper is interesting because everything that was discussed is practical, which means the ideas brought forth can be put into use straight away because readers won’t have to reflect heavily on the ideas because it is less theoretical. Some of the practical ideas are where to get videos, media to play videos and how to save videos, which I consider a very thoughtful idea discussed because as much as teachers know how to use them in class, most of them are not savvy enough to know how to save or where to download these videos.
Finally, I like this paper because it includes ‘how to use video in the classroom for language learning activities’. This is interesting because the activities mentioned are not what teachers usually do when using videos in classrooms. One example of activity with a video is the ‘freeze frame’; when the teacher pauses a clip at certain points and as questions such as “what is he wearing?”, “what colour is the car?” or “what’s going to happen next?” Rather than just playing the clip and asking questions later, why not make the learning more lateral and ask during the clip? Instead of showing the clip, why not ask students to make hypothesis or outcomes of the clip? Such ideas are rarely thought when using videos in classrooms.
Based on the points mentioned above, I have to give credit to the author for conveying these ideas brilliantly in the paper. Also, the level of English used is very general and easy to understand, compared to some paper which uses academic jargons which can be confusing even for scholars. This paper is suitable for any teacher, not just English teachers, to understand how to effectively apply videos in classrooms. Again, the ideas brought forth are applicable and the objective of lessons can be easily achieved by inferring to the guidelines included in this paper.
This paper is important to the teaching and learning of ESL in the general and Malaysian contexts because the idea of using technology are often mentioned and discussed in other articles and journals but not many dwell into the aspect of using videos effectively in classrooms. In Malaysia especially, where we are in the run to catch up with other countries in terms of technology incorporation in classrooms, this article should help teachers understand how technologies should be fully utilized in classrooms, and not just requirements to meet with learning objectives or the standards of ISO. Hopefully, this article will help teachers who incorporates CALL in their classrooms make full use of the technology to achieve a much richer learning experience in class.
Ok, 8/10
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