Introducing a new generation of readers for your students Discovery Readers Introducing a new generation of readers for your students

Cambridge University Press, in partnership with Discovery Education, has developed next-generation graded readers that will motivate and engage your students with high-impact topics and video.

Cambridge Discovery Interactive Readers are based on the principle that students are motivated to read when presented with materials that are engaging and innovative.

Innovative materials go beyond the selection of novel topics and change the ways learners interact with the topics. Each Cambridge Discovery Interactive Reader comes with an online environment with embedded audio, video and interactive exercises.

Thought-provoking topics

Automatically graded activities give students immediate feedback and save teachers time.

Engaging Language Learners through Video Hayo Reinders By the age of 21, the average language learner will have spent just 5,000 hours reading, but will have spent about 10,000 hours playing video games, and 20,000 watching TV (Prensky 2004). Clearly, the visual medium is very important in learners’ life experience.

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials What are some of the benefits of video for language acquisition? Familiarity. The medium of video is one that our learners are intimately familiar and comfortable with.

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials Authenticity. An almost unlimited range of authentic video materials is available online. In addition, learners are accustomed to communicating through video (see below), and as such the use of video as a classroom activity is itself authentic.

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials Multimedia. Research has shown that learners benefit from encountering content in different modalities. Video inherently combines audio and visual content.

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials Learner autonomy. Learners do not only consume videos, but also enjoy creating their own video content, or adapting others’ materials, and in doing so have control over the product. They can determine the topic, linguistic content, tone, and style of the video, and take responsibility for the process of imagining, planning, making, and revising the content.

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials Sharing. Learners can easily upload and share their videos with others. Learners can comment on each other’s videos, respond with further videos, have group discussions (either online or in class) about them, and so on. This social aspect of video is an important reason why some now consider video a form of communication (Zappavigna 2012).

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials New ways of learning. All of the above demonstrate the use of video as contributing to new ways for learners to engage with content, new ways of self-expression, and new ways of connecting with others (Cope and Kalantzis 2007).

The Pedagogical Benefits of Video Materials An example of this is the increasing popularity of digital storytelling, where learners create collages of audio, text, music, and video materials, often incorporating their own and others’ (adapted) work, as well as multiple “voices” into an individual expression (Reinders 2011).

Guidelines for Incorporating Video Materials Clearly, video materials have a number of benefits for learners, but how can they best be integrated into a lesson? Simply telling students to watch some videos may be entertaining to them, but it will not ensure the greatest learning outcomes.

Guidelines for Incorporating Video Materials Video material, like other pedagogical content, need careful consideration before they are used. Is the material of a suitable level? Does it contain inappropriate content? Does it presume background knowledge the learners may not have?

Characteristics that will help to maximize learning benefits Engaging content: Early materials especially designed for English Language Learners were linguistically appropriate but the content was not of interest to the learners.

Characteristics that will help to maximize learning benefits Authenticity, to a point: Materials need to be of a level that is challenging, but not too far beyond learner’s capacity. In the early days of Internet, a common mistake was for teachers and textbooks to simply instruct learners to go online and find a video about a certain topic.

Characteristics that will help to maximize learning benefits This resulted in a great deal of frustration as watching authentic materials without guidance or support is simply too difficult for most learners.

Characteristics that will help to maximize learning benefits Integration: Videos need to be linked to the materials and classroom activities that precede and follow them, both linguistically and in terms of their content/theme. Video materials can help to illustrate grammatical points, improve listening skills, or can serve as an input for subsequent productive tasks.

Characteristics that will help to maximize learning benefits Instruction: It is important for learners to receive clear expectations as to what it is they are to do with a particular video, and what they are expected to learn from it. Without such instruction, learners may simply see the video as a opportunity to relax.

Characteristics that will help to maximize learning benefits Support: With most classroom activities, teacher preteach key content, or provide guiding questions and background information. When using video material, this is particular important, as it does require ongoing attention and support on behalf of the teacher.