The Role of Video Materials in EFL Classrooms

The rapid growth of technology has brought many innovations in education and especially in language teaching. In order to offer and create successful classes language teachers, especially English language teachers are using different audio-visual tools to facilitate the teaching process, besides textbooks and other interesting and engaging activities, which ensure student centeredness, autonomy, interaction and connectivity to a certain theme, and videos such as: movies, songs, power point presentations are widely used in EFL classrooms. This paper first attempts to explore the goals of using video material in EFL classrooms and the advantages of using video materials in EFL teaching, on the basis of which proposes a framework of teaching principles, strategies and specific tips which facilitate EFL teaching. Then will bring theories and practice related to the use of audio- visual tools in language learning especially in ESP classes at a university level and the reason why videos can be considered as valuable pedagogical tools, to facilitate the teaching process. The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits that the language teachers and learners get in using audio-visual aids in teaching and learning the English language, as well as to show that by using the appropriate video material the teachers can improve and ensure student- centeredness, have their students interested and engaged in activities, be more active, motivated and confident in their communicative language competence. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.