As of today, my YouTube channel has reached over 100,000 views. The material posted thus far (currently only 7 videos) mostly aim at making Old English grammar digestible. This blog post provides some behind-the-scenes information on the rationale and process behind the videos and also announces a new video, posted last week.
Why Old English grammar bytes?
While some students acquire the basics of Old English grammar after one round of explanation, others need to be reminded of the basics over and over again. This varying pace of acquisition cannot always be catered to in a traditional classroom setting. If I were to repeat the basic grammatical information too often, valuable in-class time is lost and the students who got it the first time may lose interest, creating a potentially hostile atmosphere for students who need the extra explanation.
So, what I really wanted to do was find a way for students to learn Old English grammar at their own pace and avoid having to repeat the same basic information over and over again. An added advantage of that would be that I would have more time in class to deal with specifics of literature or the weekly translations and so on. The idea for Old English Grammar Bytes was born: grammar videos that can be watched whenever, at one’s own pace, as often as one might want.
How were they made?
The videos were created using a green screen and fairly simple animations. I was very lucky to have the support of Leiden University’s Expertise Centre for Online Learning, which has a devoted support team for ‘knowledge clips’ (esp. Thomas J. Vorisek, who has done wonders with the camerawork and editing). For each clip, I made a storyboard with, on the left, an impression of what I wanted the image on the screen to look like and, on the right, the text I wanted to say. As you can see below, Peter Baker’s magic sheet of Old English was used as a point of departure for each of the videos, since his Introduction to Old English (3rd ed., 2010) was used for our first-year Old English course (attended by c. 100 students each year).
I quickly found that one of the advantages of using videos to explain grammar is that it allows for a better and more dynamic visualization of information than a traditional class room setting. For instance, we could zoom in on particular parts of the ‘Magic Sheet’ and indicate specific forms within paradigms. In addition, the ‘dry’ grammatical information could be presented in a light and attractive way by using visual material, including my own drawings (this video features my drawings of a dwarf throwing rocks at a dog to explain grammtical functions) and Old English memes (e.g., “swiga ond nim min mynet” perfectly illustrates the imperative mood and is a play on the popular ‘shut up and take my money’ meme – this meme was in vogue at the time of making the video – it is now a classic). Moreover, special effects, such as a booming voice shouting “Repeat after me: Whether adjectives are strong or weak is independent from the nouns they modify!”, help to hammer the message home – enjoy that here – the effect did not prove useful to everyone, given one of the YouTube comments “Please remove the deep voice at 2:49, I was showing this video to my young grandson and he ran out of the room in tears” – apologies! This combination of words, pictures, animation and narration allows students to learn better than from words alone.
So, in making the videos, I carefully thought about the visuals and special effects, but, being a non-native speaker of English, I also had to carefully consider my words: long strings of text with many complex words are likely to trip me up, so I had to adapt my language somewhat. Also, you will notice that I do not appear too often in the videos, except mostly for the introductions, transitions and conclusions; there is a good reason for this: it is much easier to string together various pieces of audio, than it is to smoothly transition from one video of a person speaking to another in order to get rid of garbled speech.
Finally, a new video!
The Old English Grammar Bytes were written and filmed in the Spring of 2016 and were posted on YouTube in 2017. I had and have plans to make many more videos, but simply have not found the time yet. However, I did get a chance to particpate in making an ‘Online Experience’ for prospective students of the BA-programme English Language and Literature at Leiden University a couple of months ago (you can read about this initiative here, in Dutch). This meant that I was able to make three additional videos (one on Old English; one on the differences between Old and Middle English; and one on early medieval English place names) and I was allowed to share one of these on my own YouTube channel. I will embed this video, which is a basic and brief introduction to Old English as not being Shakespeare’s English, below:
As you can see, we had some fun with new animations and special effects. Also: there was an autocue and that helped tremendously!
Hopefully, I will be able to make the other two Online Experience videos available as well, at some point, and/or find some time to make more grammar videos. I may even decide to make some vlogs out of my most popular blogs, but this too will take time. So until then, watch this space!
Thijs Porck 