English Teaching Talks - Learning outside the classroom

About English Teaching Talks

English Teaching Talks is new series produced by the British Council and presented by English language teaching experts from around the world. Divided into 6 short episodes, each video gives practical and useful advice, and is designed to help you develop your skills as an English language teacher in a number of different areas. 

Other episodes in the series are available. Click or tap on the title of the talk to visit the page:

• Integrating ICT - Nik Peachey
• Assessing learning - Carolyn Westbrook and Richard Spiby
• Inclusion - Susan Douglas

About the videos

In this series of six short videos, Claudia Rey gives ideas and the inspiration for taking language learning outside the classroom, including making visits to galleries and museums, running extra-curricular comedy or drama clubs, going on nature walks and doing virtual tours. Using English outside the classroom in real contexts helps learners build their confidence in English, explore their interests and focus on specific language they need to communicate successfully. Below is a list of each video. 

Video 1: Introduction (4:58 minutes)

Video 2: Visits to art galleries and museums (5:24 minutes)

Video 3: Comics clubs (5:14 minutes)

Video 4: Nature Walks (5:13 minutes)

Video 5: Virtual tours (4:58 minutes)

Video 6: Drama Club (4:38 minutes)

Watch all the videos on YouTube
 

Rationale

Claudia tells us that taking learning outside helps learners to:

• practise and improve language skills (speaking, listening, reading and writing)
• develop higher order thinking skills and critical thinking
• be creative
• apply and review knowledge learnt in subject areas in the real world
• use language in motivating contexts
• develop a 'growth mind set' - accept that what you do may not be perfect the first time
• take more responsibility for their learning.

Pre-viewing task

Before you watch the videos, think about the questions below. If you are using this resource as part of your professional development in your institution, discuss the questions below with your colleagues:

• Which ‘outside the classroom’ learning experiences helped you most when you were at school? Why?
• Which ‘learning outside the classroom’ experiences are most popular with your learners?
• Why are they so popular?
• What ideas would you expect to be included in the video? Why?

While viewing 

1. The benefits to the learners of taking language learning outside the classroom are specified in the rationale above. What ideas does Claudia give for each of the points in the rationale?

2. Which of the ideas involves learners in the following activities:

• Pair work

• Group work

• Acting

• Presenting something to the class

• Researching

• Using a free app

After viewing

1. Which ideas would work well in your context? Why?
2. What ideas would you add?
3. What are you going to do as a result of watching this video?
4. Was this a good choice of ideas for the video? Why/ why not?

Watch the introduction below and watch all six videos in the series on YouTube.