Videos for ESL Teaching > Videos with Cloze or Other Exercises
In this section I will be posting cloze or other exercises to be used with videos that your students can work on in lab or on their own outside of class. Most of these exercises are based on subtitles that are furnished by websites such as TED.com or Subdot.com
Using videos with subtitles in different languages is a wonderful technique. You can watch a video in the original language with the subtitles in that same language or with subtitles in another language. Very often the original transcription is provided. Ted.com uses Nokia and Dotsub.com uses the work of volunteers like myself!
So with Dotsub.com, you can add (if you have the time!) subtitles in any language. This is a wiki for subtitling videos. They provide you with the software. Just try it out or have your students try it. If your students are doing the work, I seriously insist you go over their transcription before they actually put it onto the film. Once it is on the film and published, you cannot correct any errors, which is a great pity.
In any case subtitles are an amazing tool for learning foreign languages.
So far I have produced the following exercises, which are in MS Word. In other words you can correct mistakes or make the exercise more difficult or easier—as you see fit. You can divide the cloze exercises into parts, if they are too long. Add questions, etc. Use your imagination!
""Regeneration of Cells" (8:16)"
(I did the subtitling—it was my first attempt and it took me four hours! Unfortunately, there are a couple of slight mistakes.)
