Real English Grammatical Clips from South Beach, Miami
This page is a mess, and needs to be updated in any case with our new SoBe Interviews. Update coming soon in 2009! Flash versions available of many of these videos here.
The most up to date videos and lessons are in the New Lessons Section. This is where students can do some serious learning and have some serious fun!
"SoBe" is short for "South Beach' which is at the southern part of Miami Beach, Florida. It's a great place to videotape and meet people. It's one of those special places where you can feel the creativity in the air: Sobe Clip # 1:
"Usually on Saturday" vs "Last Saturday":
practice for pre-intermediate and also for more advanced students, featuring the simple present and the simple past.
What kinds of videos do you find in the Real English lessons? There are several types of video edits.
First, the general presentation videos, and also the basic edit.
We also make video edits with insertion of extra pictures or "stills", in order to help give meaning to what the students hear.
Finally, after doing the interactive exercises, the student can watch a closed caption version of a video.
"Usually on Saturday" vs "Last Saturday"
Real Media Downloads only for the moment :
Real English Errors - CCC - Closed Captions Corrected :
Here's a new type of closed caption edit,
with corrections of mistakes. Both the interviewer and the interviewees make mistakes when they speak. This is all part of real English!
Our
very good friends invited us to their home on the
island of Nantucket where they live from June to
October, so we combined work with pleasure,
videotaping in downtown Nantucket and at the island's
charter ship docks. On the far right our gracious
host, part of his family in between, and on the
far left, Paul Hower, the interviewer, with his
wife Ann Kellan.
Ann
took us right to town hall upon arrival where we
obtained a videotaping permit. The local authorities
were most cooperative and friendly.
This aerial map shows
an extreme eastern part of the state
of Massachusetts, USA, the island of
Nantucket encircled, with the island
of Martha's Vineyard to the west and
Cape Cod to the north. The town in
yellow is Hyannis, showing the general
direction of the ferry boats to Nantucket.
As
usual, we did two general types of videotaping:
1 - Grammatical
(usually for beginner and intermediate students)
and 2 - Topical (usually for intermediate and advanced levels - see examples below).
These are not strict distinctions.
All Real English videos are both topical
and grammatical. It's simply a question of emphasis.
In this first
case, the emphasis is on the grammatical content.
Click on the picture
of Hillary to stream the 4-minute "
What
have you got...?" clip, an example
of a "grammatical video". This is the short version.
There is also a long, complete version (almost 9 minutes) of "What
have you got...?". Stream or
Download it.Double your fun and learning experience! So far, this is the most popular Real English clip (the most downloads).
Or download the short version instead of streaming, in case you want to save it on your hard drive.
And here's a a longer version (6 min 30 sec) of
"What have you got in the bag?":
2 - A
few topical videos from Nantucket
Interactive online exercises will be made for these
new videos and they will enter the Real English
learning library. There are presently 70 main videos for 70 interactive lessons, approx. 70% "grammatical" and 30% "topical".
1
- Our first topical example from Nantucket includes 2 speakers of English
from Brazil, Roberta
and Maira, the
"Culture Collectors" (Real Media downloads)
As you will see, they
first came to Nantucket directly from
Brazil, but now they take the ferry.
The interviewer has called Roberta and
Maira "Culture Collectors".
Why? Click on the picture of Roberta
and Maira to find out.
Roberta and Maira
2
- Our first born in the USA interviewee
is Kelly. We met her while she was working at the
docks where private boats and ships are chartered.
Kelly's
from Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA, and
spends 3 months per year on the island, promoting
and booking reservations for fishing and pleasure
tours on large boats and ships. We were lucky to
have a long "interruption" during this
interview, as we watch Kelly doing her job on the
phone, booking real reservations for a group of
8 people who will be fishing all day at the time
you read this. What is the customer saying?
Sobe Clip # 1
