The “Blank” Dialogue Updated
The blank dialogue is a very “natural” teaching approach. Something intuitive about it. I used it in my early days of teaching – just pausing a dialogue on cassette tape and asking students to respond. You had to get skilled with using those big buttons! That is what being a teckkie used to entail!
Most blank dialogues are receptive – students listen and fill in. Then repeat the lines and try to do it “without looking”. That’s okay – Molinsky and Bliss would be in bliss – however, nowadays with video and technology, I believe we can do more.
Blank dialogues are highly engaging to students because they do some important things:
1. They embrace a powerful principle of teaching – anticipation. Students don’t know what will be coming and must respond. So it is very engaging. Also, it teaches (in a controlled fashion) how to tolerate the “ambiguity” of language.
2. They recycle language and are repetitive. The form is controlled and students just substitute.
3. They allow production of language by students in a controlled fashion. Students can produce language and self correct themselves immediately against a model. Swain and Long are two researchers who stress the importance (and value) of production for language acquisition.
4. Students can personalize language. They utter the words, they can change them about, say them differently. Even respond differently than the original model.
Practical examples.
Let me show you clearly, how I envision the video blank dialogue. See many to illustrate my point HERE.
1. Here is a standard dialogue for language learning. The teacher plays. The students repeat. The teacher asks questions. blablabla…. Standard and non anticipatory.
I even made a book using 20 dialogues with cloze scripts for EFL Classroom 2.0 members. Also get all the videos.
What do you think ?
Here’s my own recording! I just used NCH’s Wavepad to “silence” selected parts of the audio. Then put that into Audacity and recorded over the track. Finally, used the karaoke editor to put it all together (Studio version allows you to produce a video). Get all this on the Software for Education page I put together.
Could u pls explain how u include the writing
in the video ? What software do u use ?
many thanks
Iris
I meant to ask: what is the studio version ? where can i find it ?
Iris
Iris,
You can get info. about Karaoke and how to make one here – http://eltandtech.pbworks.com/w/page/27693942/Karaoke
Use the editor and put in the words. As long as you have the player, you can play the files. But if you want a video that will work on youtube etc.. you’ll have to go to the karafun website and purchase the studio version
http://www.karafun.com/karaokeeditor/
I now have all these videos up at http://eflclassroom.ning.com/Wpage/karaoke-dialogues-great
Thank you. Your explanations were very helpful.
BTW, It seems that the editor is not included anymore
when i download the player.
Iris,
did you use this link? This will have both the player and editor. http://eflclassroom.com/software/karafun.exe