Análisis y aplicación de la interactividad sonora en el diseño de sistemas multimedia para la enseñanza de lenguas modernas
El estudio parte de la premisa de que cualquier tipo de enseñanza ha de explotar al máximo todo proceso interactivo que facilite el aprendizaje. En la enseñanza contemporánea se combinan la educación presencial y a distancia; el profesor selecciona el mensaje que desea transmitir, decide el canal a través del cual se va a realizar la comunicación y actúa como moderador y guía del diálogo educativo. En el método tradicional-gramatical, la interacción entre profesor y alumno se desarrolla principalmente a través del canal escrito. La práctica de la enseñanza se basa en la traducción de oraciones gramaticales aisladas que, a menudo, poco tienen que ver con la realidad que rodea al estudiante. Se permite la utilización de la lengua materna. El uso de métodos deductivos para la presentación de las reglas gramaticales tampoco favorece la interacción del estudiante con los materiales. La contestación que se le exige está cerrada por lo que no estimula su capacidad de respuesta. En cambio, la utilización de recursos como el vídeo o la televisión le permite ampliar contenidos y variar de canal, de acuerdo a las necesidades específicas. Así como existe una tecnología audiovisual, existe una tecnología del habla que se ha descuidado en los últimos tiempos. Para la autora, el elemento oral en el estudio de una lengua es un fin en sí mismo. Toda lengua tiene un sistema fonético y unas pautas de entonación y acentuación que el estudiante ha de dominar en la medida que le permitan comprender y hacerse comprender en lengua extranjera. En este contexto, las nuevas técnicas de almacenamiento, reproducción y reconocimiento de voz suponen un gran avance, siempre que su integración vaya acompañada de un correcto diseño de actividades para el desarrollo de las destrezas orales del estudiante de lenguas extranjeras. La interacción entre el ser humano y un sistema informático puede ser de muy diversa calidad, por lo que se hace necesario utilizar alguna escala que permita valorarla. En este estudio se seleccionaron dos escalas distintas, susceptibles de ser aplicadas al análisis de programas informáticos para la enseñanza de lenguas, una para estimar el nivel de interactividad [BORSOOK 1991] y otra para establecer una clasificación en torno a tres ejes que especifican el qué y el cómo de la interactividad [SCHWIER 1992]. La conclusión principal es que la enseñanza de lenguas tiende cada vez más a plantearse como un proceso interactivo, en el que cada uno de sus componentes se corresponde con los elementos propios de un diálogo comunicativo.
Video in Theory and Practice: Issues for Classroom Use and Teacher Video Evaluation
Strengths of video:
Video can present visual information that is difficult to convey in other ways. One of the appeals of video is that it provides a sense of ‘being there’. Students can ‘walk on the moon’, or ‘visit an erupting volcano’ without ever leaving the classroom. A student who sees and hears the suffering of African famine victims will likely be more affected than one who reads simple textual information about it. However, video, like television, may condition viewers to be insensitive or to feel helpless in the context of such events. Video viewing without proper instructional context and planning can have all of the potential weaknesses or deleterious effects of television.
Not only do videos allow students to ‘travel’ to different places, they permit travel through time as well. Events of the past or great works of literature can be brought to life when characters, costumes and customs of the times and events (historical or fictitious) are portrayed on the screen.
Videos can be used to demonstrate specific manual skills or physical processes, either at normal speed, in slow motion, or speeded up to reveal relationships, principles, or practices. Videos can provide visual access to situations or experiments that would otherwise be too dangerous or expensive for students to experience personally. They can be used to simplify complex ideas, using media-specific techniques such as animation, computer graphics or clay-mation. Video can reveal “hidden worlds” through photomicrography, astronomical photography, night photography and time-lapse photography.
Videos can be used to model positive behavior and to motivate students. They are particularly useful for introducing a topic, or reviewing material already studied when motivation is a key to student involvement in a learning sequence. Videos can provide messages about issues critical to the lives of learners, or to the topic under consideration. Videos can be designed to have strong emotional appeal, thus they can tap into emotional and values involvement with specific issues. With a careful concern about critical analysis of message design, information sources, and the power of video to elicit emotional responses, videos can be effective for examining many different types of controversial issues and promoting class discussions about them.
Video may help to promote learning in students with high visual orientation in their learning styles. Video can also provide visually-compelling access to information for many learners with reading difficulties who might miss learning opportunities provided solely by print-based materials. In this respect, videos provide important learning opportunities to students working in a second language.
Research has shown that instructional strategies and cognitive modeling traits embedded in specific media are related to both how well and how quickly learning is fostered (Clark & Salomon, 1988). Zooming in to details can help students learn discrimination skills. Providing arrows, circles, and titles can often promote other types of discrimination skills. Animations, time-lapse or stop frame sequences, perspective changes and a number of other techniques may help students develop analytical skills relative to the topic.
Effective sound and titling can provide a multimodal learning experience suitable to the learning styles of many students. Instructional design can take advantage of sound to provide attention-getting, emotional or affective involvement with a topic or issue. The content of a video can be designed appropriate to the learner’s level of cognitive or affective development. Videos can present actions and information contradictory to a viewer’s prior conceptions. This may induce cognitive conflict that will challenge the learner to use conflict resolution processes. During conflict resolution learners develop hypotheses that promote learning by eventually allowing them to accommodate new information and understandings (Fosnot, 1984). In short, videos can be designed with embedded instructional strategies and pedagogy to help activate thoughtful engagement with the topic.
Background to video utilization techniques - Active Learning.
Because today’s students have spent many hours being entertained by television and video movies, teachers face the challenge of breaking students’ passive viewing habits. When videos are properly integrated into instruction, they do not function merely to provide diversion - they promote learning through active engagement of students’ mental processes.
Active learning is one of the foundation pedagogical approaches of modern learning theory and educational change initiatives. Students learn best when they are actively (physically and/or intellectually) engaged in the learning activity. The following principles of active learning are useful guidelines for examining strategies for video in an educational context:
• encourage group activity and learning through talk;
• allow for curiosity and speculation;
• allow learners to make their own input and demonstrate autonomy;
• allow learners to utilize the knowledge they already have;
• emphasize the process of learning, and;
• allow learners to use higher order cognitive skills such as evaluation, synthesis, hypothesis,
General aspects of viewing the video:
The ‘television response’ is one of the deadliest learned behaviors influencing modern education. Ironically, most educational video programming is designed as a single linear message, the hobgoblin of the television response. Teachers who venture into new terrain by halting a video mid-program may at first find students up in arms. (One way to ameliorate this response might be to say: “Okay class, commercial break.”) Ultimately however, effective instructional strategies will occasionally or often require thoughtful modification of the continuous viewing approach to videos. Also, it is not necessary for students to view the entire program at one time, nor is it always necessary to view more than certain short segments. This approach may allow the use of several relevant programs during one class.
Locating specific segments of a tape may seem like a tedious exercise for the teacher, but this can be minimized if the VCR’s counter is used to identify the desired segments at the time that the video is previewed. Some video programs have an onscreen display of elapsed time to further facilitate the location of particular segments. This feature may also assist students working independently using a prepared viewing guide. Some VCRs have features for ‘marking’ certain sections of the video. The tape may be rapidly shuttled forward from one viewing section to the next. Modern VCRs also make video editing relatively convenient. With little loss of quality, it is possible to edit a precise sequence of video ‘clips’ from several videos to exactly meet the needs of a presentation without having to change video cassettes. It is also possible to simply end the video before its conclusion. Students may then discuss how the program will end, either as a large group, or in smaller groups, before the concluding portion is actually viewed. Sometimes it is useful for the students to view a program once in its entirety, and then view portions again to focus in on particular points. Multiple viewings are especially beneficial for documentaries with a high information load or those that explain key concepts.
Practical Aspects of Using Video in the Foreign Language Classroom
by Christine Canning-Wilson
Current Theory on the Use of Video as an Educational Medium of Instruction
Using Video in the F/SL Classroom
What are the practical implications of using video in the classroom? At the most basic level of instruction, video is a form of communication and it can be achieved without the help of language, since we often interact by gesture, eye contact and facial expression to convey a message. Video provides visual stimuli such as the environment and this can lead to and generate prediction, speculation and a chance to activate background schemata when viewing a visual scene reenacted. It can be argued that language found in videos could help nonnative speakers understand stress patterns. Videos allow the learner to see body rhythm and speech rhythm in second language discourse through the use of authentic language and speed of speech in various situations. Videos allow contextual clues to be offered. In addition, video can stimulate and motivate student interest. The use of visuals overall can help learners to predict information, infer ideas and analyze the world that is brought into the classroom via the use of video instruction. In a teaching or testing situation video can help enhance clarity and give meaning to an auditory text; it can create a solid link between the materials being learned and the practical application of it in a testing situation; the video can act as a stimulus or catalyst to help integrate materials or aspects of the language; videos can help manipulate language and at the same time be open to a variety of interpretations.
Balatova (1994) suggests that unlike a student, who listened in sound only conditions, the use of video and sound conditions were more consistent in their perception of the story, in the sense that difficult and easy passages formed a pattern. The study notes that scenes where utterances were backed up by an action and/or body language and that were relatively shorter, were considered easier to understand by students. Less lively scenes, which involved relatively long stretches of conversation, were labeled as more difficult. These comments illustrate that visual cues are important, since they either facilitated or distracted from understanding. In addition, her research also notes that "It is also interesting to point out that students in the sound-only conditions in the two experiments were less successful in maintaining the interest and concentration in listening".
A recent large-scale survey by Canning-Wilson (2000) suggests that the students like learning language through the use of videos. One of the results of her survey shows that learners prefer action/entertainment films to language films or documentaries in the classroom. She states although these films may seem to hold student interest, she believes that it could be inferred that student comprehension of the video may be due to the visual clues instead of the auditory components.
Omaggio (1979) suggests that "the profession has virtually no empirical basis for promoting the use of visuals as aids to comprehension in the second language; we know practically nothing about how students benefit from visuals" (1979, p.107). Recently, in a lecture on the use of visuals in research, Canning-Wilson (2000) claims that the use of illustrations, visuals, pictures, perceptions, mental images, figures, impressions, likenesses, cartoons, charts, graphs, colors, replicas, reproductions, or anything else used to help one see an immediate meaning in the language may benefit the learner by helping to clarify the message, provided the visual works in a positive way to enhance or supplement the language point. She reports that images contextualized in video or on its own can help to reinforce the language, provided the learner can see immediate meaning in terms of vocabulary recognition in the first language. Furthermore, her research suggests that visuals can be used to help enhance the meaning of the message trying to be conveyed by the speakers through the use of paralinguistic cues.
Arthur (1999) claims that: "Video can give students realistic models to imitate for role-play; can increase awareness of other cultures by teaching appropriateness and suitability; can strengthen audio/visual linguistic perceptions simultaneously; can widen the classroom repertoire and range of activities; can help utilize the latest technology to facilitate language learning; can teach direct observation of the paralinguistic features found in association with the target language; can be used to help when training students in ESP related scenarios and language; can offer a visual reinforcement of the target language and can lower anxiety when practicing the skill of listening."
Video used in a classroom should be interpretive and to the point. The visual should show reasonable judgement and enhance comprehension, heighten sensory acuteness, and illustrate the target language being used. Practitioners should avoid the use of distracters, over-crowded or violent stimuli. Visuals are ineffective in the learning process when the visual is too small; when the visual or video uses stereotypes; when the visual or video is a poor reproduction; when the picture is to far away from the text illustration; when the video has irrelevant captioning; when the video or visual offers to much information related or unrelated to the picture; when the video or visual is poorly scaled; and when the picture is not esthetically meaningful. A visual cue may be accompanied by a written cue to focus on a lexical item being furnished. Videos can make the task, situation or language more authentic. More importantly, video can be used to help distinguish items on a listening comprehension test, aid in the role of recall, help to sequence events, as well as be adapted, edited or changed in order to meet the needs of the language learner (Canning, 1998).
Using DVD feature films in the EFL classroom
By Jane King
Making the Most of the Film Medium
The use and feasibility of feature films in the classroom have inevitably evoked controversy among classroom teachers who have a curriculum to follow and limited time to allocate. Since some teachers still view movies as a medium of entertainment that has no place in a pedagogic setting, or, at most, as only outside classroom assignments or as a treat.
Films offer endless opportunities for pedagogically sound activities for developing fluency. The key to using films effectively mainly lies in the teacher's ability in preparing students to receive the film's message. Many teachers have provided creative ideas with different purposes for enhancing active viewing (Davis, 1998; Ryan, 1998; Donley, 2000;Holden, 2000; Fox, 1999; Lin, 2000; King2001). Some teachers use viewing sheets consisting of simple multiple-choice questions to promote fluency, rather than use many new lexical items or idioms to divert the focus from fluency. Other teachers integrate film response journals into lessons, or use the whole-movie approach based on a response-based engagement with opinions and ideas. Films may yield other types of projects that can be incorporated into the classroom setting. Casanave and Freedman (1995) assigned a film presentation project for their intermediate English students in which films were viewed holistically and critically. The implementation of PowerPoint and DVDs in student film presentations represents another collaborative group work that encourages computer applications (King, 2002).
Thus, "making the most of movies" has been adopted as a motto for teachers who defend the merits of films as a powerful tool for language acquisition. In other words, teachers need to make the most of learning opportunities by means of films to justify the use of films in the classroom. To start with, they may ask themselves several questions: What are the pedagogical reasons for using a particular film sequence (Stempleski, 2000:10)? What type of approach in dealing with movies should be taken, viewing a movie in its entirety or in segments? Will non-captioned or captioned films be more appropriate for a particular class? What are the film selection criteria? And finally, what kind of activities will integrate the four skills into the course, elicit student involvement and avoid passive viewing?
Short Sequence Approach
While presenting films, some structurally-driven approaches have been widely adapted by classroom teachers: a sequential approach of teaching scene-by-scene or one segment at a time; a single-scene approach in which only one scene or segment from the entire film is utilized; a selective approach featuring only a few scenes from different parts of the film; a whole film approach that shows the film in its entirety in a single viewing. When selecting approaches, they all are feasible depending on the teaching objectives and target groups.
Many advocates of short sequences suggest that two-hour feature film has the problem of overload and length for less advanced learners, so the teacher needs to provide bite-sized chunks for them to digest. Essentially, the teacher has to decide which function each sequence is to perform (Stempleski, 2000:10). Is this sequence used to generate a theme-based discussion, to practice listening strategies, to illustrate a grammar or pronunciation point, or to present cultural background? What activities will benefit them the most?
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