The 3-stage Method: How to Use YouTube Videos for Effective English Conversation Sessions

Picture this: you find a YouTube video you know your ENGin students will love. You show up to your session excited, press play, and five minutes later... silence. You ask what they thought. "It was good," they say. "Interesting." And that's it. The conversation dies, and you're left wondering how to fill the next 45 minutes.

Sound familiar?

Here's the thing: the video itself probably wasn't the problem. YouTube is the largest collection of authentic English content on the planet, and a lot of it is more engaging than any textbook you could use. The real problem is what happens around the video. Without a plan, even the best clip turns into passive watching instead of active learning. Your student sits there, takes it in, and then has nothing to say about it.

The good news is you don't need to become a curriculum designer to fix this. You just need a simple system you can repeat every session, one that turns any video into a full hour of real conversation. That's what this 3-stage method is for, and it works the same whether you're meeting online or sitting across a table from your student.

Let's start with the part that worries most new volunteers: preparation.

Before you start: smart prep (10 minutes or less)

You don't need to spend hours getting ready. You can prep an entire video lesson in about 10 minutes using one trick.

Instead of watching the video multiple times, read it.

Most YouTube videos have auto-generated transcripts. Click the "... more" below any video, select "Show transcript," and you'll get the full script right there. Reading is 3-4 times faster than listening, so you can scan a 5-minute video in about 90 seconds.

As you read through the transcript, look for what we call the "linguistic bones," the vocabulary and phrases that carry the main meaning. Pick out 8-10 words or expressions that meet these three criteria:

• they're essential to understanding the topic;

• they're likely unfamiliar to your student;

• they're commonly used by English speakers.

In the "Living With Planes" video, for example, you might pick out: "hangar," "taxiway," "airstrip," "aerobatics," "suburban community."

If the transcript feature isn't working, you can use a free Chrome extension like "YouTube Summary" or save a video to your computer and then upload it to Gemini to generate the transcript instead.

Use the prompt: "Extract the transcript from this video. Do not change the wording. Output a clean, nicely formatted, word-for-word transcript."

And if you're short on time or just want curated content, ready-to-use video-based lesson plans handle this entire step for you, with vocabulary already selected and discussion questions included.

Once you've got your word list, you're ready for the meeting with your ENGin student. The session itself breaks into three stages.

Stage 1: Pre-viewing (prime the brain)

Never, and we really do mean never, start by simply pressing play. Your student's brain needs preparation, the same way muscles need warming up before exercise. If you skip this step, they'll hear a wall of English and tune out.

The goal here is twofold: activate whatever background knowledge your student already has about the topic, and pre-teach the vocabulary they'll need to follow along.

Show the words first

Take your list of 8-10 key words and show them to your student. Ask: "Which of these words do you already know? Can you use any of them in a sentence?"

1. Suburban

2. Commute

3. Aerobatics

4. Hangar

5. To taxi

6. Airstrip

7. Right of way

8. Spectator

If they know 4 out of 8, that's fine. Quickly go through the other 4. You don't need dictionary definitions, just make sure they get the general idea. A quick exchange is all it takes:

You: "Have you heard the word 'commute' before?"

Student: "Maybe... I'm not sure."

You: "It means the trip from your home to work. Like, 'My commute is 30 minutes by metro.'"

Keep it casual. They don't need perfect comprehension at this point. Listening isn't reading, and they won't catch every word in the video anyway. This vocabulary check just helps them follow along without getting completely lost.

Create curiosity with a prediction

Once the vocabulary is out of the way, show a screenshot or thumbnail from the video (you can grab this directly from YouTube). Ask: "What do you think this video is about?"

Let them guess freely. Their predictions are often wildly different from reality, and that's exactly what you want. The gap between what they expect and what actually happens creates curiosity. Now they want to watch, because they want to find out if they were right.

Here's what this might look like in practice:

You show an image of a plane parked outside the house.

Student: "Umm, is this Photoshop? Or maybe a small airport?"

You: "Good guess! Let's watch and find out."

That small exchange changes the entire dynamic. Instead of passively receiving information, your student is now watching with a purpose. They're checking their own predictions. That mental shift makes a real difference.

With the vocabulary introduced and their curiosity activated, it's time to press play.

Stage 2: While-viewing (stay engaged)

The main rule for this stage is simple: your student should never watch passively. Give them a specific task that keeps their brain working while they listen.

What task you assign depends on how long the video is.

For videos under 2 minutes, watch twice. The first time is for the gist: "What's the main idea?" The second time is for details: "What specific example does the speaker give?"

For videos between 3 and 5 minutes, one viewing is usually enough, but give them a single focus point before you press play. Something like:

• "Listen for the speaker's main argument"

• "Count how many examples they give"

• "Notice what the different people in the video do for work"

One task is enough. More than that and you risk cognitive overload, where they're trying to track so many things at once that they stop processing the language itself.

There's one more thing worth mentioning here. Don’t pause every 20 seconds to explain things. Let the video play through. Students can handle some ambiguity, and if you interrupt too much, listening stops feeling like a conversation starter and starts feeling like an exam.

After viewing, ask a few simple comprehension questions:

• "What was the video about?"

• "What surprised you?"

• "Was there anything you didn't understand?"

These questions do double duty. They check whether your student followed the video, and they naturally open the door to Stage 3, where the real conversation begins.

Stage 3: Post-viewing (the conversation part)

This is the stage where most volunteers stop too early. They ask "Did you like it?", get a "Yes," and then scramble for what to do next. The key is not to treat the video as the lesson itself. The video is just the raw material. Stage 3 is where you turn it into a real conversation.

Start with a summary (build confidence)

Ask your student to summarize what they watched, but don't just say "tell me what happened." Give them scaffolding, meaning a structure they can lean on while they speak.

The easiest approach is a keyword summary. Write down 5-6 words from the video, including vocabulary you taught in Stage 1. Then say: "Try to retell what you remember using these words."

For the planes video, your keywords might be: aviation, community, hangar, lifestyle, enthusiast.

A student's attempt might sound like: "The video talk about aviation community. People are enthusiast about flying. They have hangar next to house. This lifestyle is very special and different from normal suburban area."

That's exactly what you want. They're speaking, they're using new vocabulary in context, and they're building confidence! Don't jump in to correct grammar at this point. Just note the errors and come back to them later.

Mine the YouTube comments (great debate material)

Once the summary is done, try something new: scroll down to the comment section.

YouTube comments are unfiltered English written by real people with real opinions, often strong ones. Before your ENGin meeting, find 2-3 comments that express different viewpoints on the topic.

Under the planes video, you might find comments like:

Comment 1: "Some people hit the lottery of life, that's so amazing to live and fly around whenever you want."

Comment 2: "I thought about moving there, but those people are just plane crazy."

Comment 3: "Because we are spoiled brats and we get to live with our airplanes,' instant like, she's the realest"

Show these to your student and ask: "Which comment do you agree with most? Why?"

What happens next is usually the best part of the discussion. They stop just answering your questions and start defending a position, explaining their reasoning, pushing back on ideas they disagree with. And because they care about what they're saying, they stop worrying about grammar and start focusing on getting their point across. They talk more. You talk less. That's the goal.

End with a realistic output

To wrap up the session, give your student a short writing task, but not a formal essay. Nobody writes those in real life. Instead, make it something that mirrors how people actually communicate online.

Try this: put a blank "YouTube comment box" on your screen, or just say "Imagine you're commenting on this video." Give your student 3-5 minutes to write their own response.

This works well for a few reasons. It's a realistic task, the kind of writing they might actually do in English. It gives them a few minutes of quiet processing time, which is a nice break after all that speaking. And once they're done, you can read their comment together and talk about it, which often sparks one more round of conversation.

The quiet writing time is also useful for you. It gives you a chance to look over your notes and pick out one or two grammar points from the errors you heard during the session.

Putting it all together: a real example

Let's walk through the whole method with an actual video: "Living With Planes: Inside California's Neighborhood Built for Pilots."

Pre-viewing (about 5-10 minutes): Show 8 words: hangar, to taxi, airstrip, right of way, aerobatics, suburban, spoiled brat, spectator. Ask which ones the student knows.

Then show a screenshot of an airplane parked next to a house. Ask "What's unusual here?" The student predicts it's about rich people or a special airport.

While-viewing (about 4 minutes): Before pressing play, give one task: "There are 4 different people interviewed. Notice what each person does for a living." Then watch the video once through without pausing.

Post-viewing (about 40 minutes):

Start with a quick check: "So, what was your prediction? Were you right?"

Move into a keyword summary using the 8 words from earlier.

Ask discussion questions like "Would you want to live in a place like this?" and "What are the downsides of this lifestyle?"

Then go over 2-3 YouTube comments and ask if your students agree or disagree with them.

Finish with a short writing task: "Write a 2-3 sentence comment. Would you want to live in a community designed around a specific hobby or profession?"

Total: about 60 minutes. By the end, your student has listened to authentic English, practiced new vocabulary, debated real opinions, and spent most of the session actually speaking.

Why this works for your ENGin meetings

You don't need teaching credentials or international certificates to use this method. Just follow the same structure each time.

The 3-stage approach gives both you and your student a predictable rhythm. Students feel more comfortable when they know what to expect: some vocabulary work up front, a clear task during the video, and space to share their opinions afterward. That predictability builds trust, and trust makes people more willing to speak up, even when they're not sure their English is perfect.

When you follow this framework, you're doing more than watching videos together. You're running a real lesson where your student practices listening comprehension, picks up new words in context, and has genuine conversations about topics they actually care about.

So next time you find a good YouTube video, don't just press play and hope for the best. Run it through these three stages and see what happens. And if you want even more structure, professionally designed lesson plans that pair videos with discussion frameworks can be a useful next step.

This article was prepared for ENGin by betterclass. Find more conversation lessons and teaching resources at betterclass.net.

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