This is our last class for a while. What are you going to DO with your English ability from now on? during the vacation and after graduation from AGU? The future is up to you. We have been USING video stories. Listen to Mark explain

With a collection of interesting English videos you will HAVE all the listening practice that you NEED. Step 2 in your plan is to FIND videos that you would like to TALK to other people about. Stories (movies and TV dramas) are highly RECOMMENDED, because you can UNDERSTAND most of the story without UNDERSTANDING the dialog. The English dialog is a bonus ... listening practice in context.

The video does not necessarily have to be an English video. Remember Saijo no Meii was a Japanese drama. Listening Comprehension pracitice is good, but HAVING something to TALK about in English is the most important thing.

Here's an experiment: Take two groups of people. SHOW one group a movie or drama without any sound. LET the other group LISTEN to the sound track (in their native language) without any picture (blank screen). Which group will UNDERSTAND the story more easily and better. PLACE your bets. My money is on the video group, not the audio group.

This is what MAKES the combination of video and stories so powerful for language learning, especially if viewing is REPEATED (for deep learning). The learner already UNDERSTANDS a great deal of the story from the video and can GUESS the meaning of the sounds that they HEAR over and over. This is the way babies LEARN their native language ... from LISTENING with their eyes wide open.

Babies WATCHING their world and LISTENING to the sounds of language also have people they can TALK to. This interaction SPEEDS UP the acquisition of BOTH language and communication skills. What's the result? ... chatty babies. They START talking ... they KEEP talking ... and they talk with other children ... their brothers and sisters and their friends (more than with their parents). They PICK UP the speech patterns of their friends.

You NEED friends that you can SPEAK English with. They do NOT have to be native speakers. If they can SPEAK simple, junior high school level English (or want to), that is perfect. You can all PICK UP native English patterns from videos. You'll IMPROVE together. There are students in your class that WANT to KNOW more about the nurses and doctors of Heisei Central Hospital and things they talked about:

That is step 3. SEARCH for those people. If you LOOK for them, you will FIND them. They are actually all around you, but they do not ADVERTISE their English ability or intellectual curiousity.

CHECK with AGU's 国際交流 Center. They will HELP you FIND people on campus. At the Nisshin Campus we HAVE an English Lounge. I'm sure that they would LIKE to HELP you CREATE another one at your campus (Kusumoto and Meijo Koen Campuses).

Once you are LISTENING to and SPEAKING English, you will COME across clusters of words that you will WANT to REMEMBER. AJ Hoge SUGGESTS that you MAKE a list of phrases and/or full sentences. KEEP it in a notebook perhaps. That could be step 4.

Here is a list of sentences about the beginning of an episode of Saijo no Meii. Experiments SHOW that you will REMEMBER the story and its grammar patterns better, if you are FORCED to THINK about the sentences ... SUPPLY some missing information, for example. With that in mind I have REMOVED the verbs and PLACED their dictionary forms at the bottom. Can you (just for fun) FIGURE OUT which verbs GO where, what form (past, present, etc), and what auxilliary verbs should be ADDED? (The verb "to be" is not LISTED, by the way.)

I LIKE to CALL this kind of exercise Verb Sudoku, because each verb must SATISFY three conditions simultaneously. Verbs DETERMINE what kinds of noun phrases can be ATTACHED and how. The first constraint is that the verb (or cluster of verbs and auxilliary verbs) must be a grammatical fit without CHANGING any of the the noun phrases or their connections: position (S, O, C, or A) OR preposition (+). The second is that it must GIVE the sentence a meaning that FITS the story. Finally if the sentences COME from a coherent story and have been PLACED in the order of events, the verb must FIT the flow of the story.

I usually PROVIDE a list of possible verbs in dictionary form at the bottom of the page. This is to HELP students whose minds GO completely blank. Students are free, however, to CHOOSE other verbs. Normally there are several verbs that will SATISFY all three condiditons. Unlike the number game sudoku OR multiple-choice English exams, we are NOT LOOKING for one single answer that is right (as opposed to wrong). We are LOOKING for verbs that PROVIDE the best fit for all three conditions--that COMMUNICATE the intended meaning in acceptable (well-formed) sentences.

For more advice about how to GET English speaking skills GO to the webpage with advice about Language Learning.

For sample answers to the Verb Sudoku exercise above GO to the webpage for Sudoku about a scene from Saijo no Meii. Spoiler Alert: do it AFTER you have FINISHED the exercise yourselves in class.