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AN EVALUATION OF THE ELT VIDEO: |
| CONTENTS |
| INTRODUCTION |
The television series 'Working English' was first broadcast on Swedish Television in 1993. The programmes could be video recorded at home without infringing copyright, and are also available on loan from AV Centralen in Sweden. Although the series itself is not 'commercial', the accompanying book, phrase book, and more recently, the CD Rom are. There are no worksheets, or teacher's book to guide the viewers on how best to use the programmes, so it would be best to create materials to suit the students and the learning objective accordingly.
The 'Working English' package made by Finnish Television in 1993, comprises twelve television (available on video) and ten radio programmes, each of 28 minutes' duration, and an interactive CD Rom. Print materials are in the form of a course book which contains an answer key, an English-Swedish word list and transcripts of the two 60 minute cassettes, plus a phrase book.
I will begin by giving some historical and cultural background to UtbildningsRadion , and the nature of this programme, which may be of interest to a non-Scandinavian audience.
| UR AND STUDY CIRCLES - THE POPULARITY OF LEARNING ENGLISH |
UtbildningsRadion is the Swedish Television educational broadcasting network, similar to the BBC in its offer of programmes aimed at schools and adults wishing to learn at home. It came into being in 1978 and is a development from Schools TV and programmes for adult education, and was meant as a complement to teaching in the classroom. Since 1985 the range of educational programmes has been extended to cover preschool, through to university level, and particularly minority groups with learning difficulties, the hearing-impaired or physically-handicapped. UR provides an excellent and much-needed service in distance education because Sweden is a long country with an area of 411,000 sq km, and has a population density of 21.5 inhabitants per sq km. Some areas, particularly in the north, are extremely sparsely populated, and the nearest neighbour can be 100 kilometres away. For these geographical and demographic reasons, distance learning is a viable option to attending university.
Another valid reason for such educational programmes is to provide core material for study circles. The founder of the first study circle was Oscar Olsson in Lund in the beginning of 1900's and had its roots based on the Swedish Good Templars' Movement. It very rapidly became affiliated to the labour unions. Its popularity is evident from the figures taken in the academic year of 1993/4, which recorded 329,696 circles with 2.8 million participants. Instead of traditional classroom teaching, small numbers of people meet in hired school premises or in one another's homes on a regular basis over a term to discuss their chosen subject from a diverse range covering the social sciences, navigation, wine tasting or a foreign language . Conversational English has been a firm favourite for the last fifty years, and one of my first classes was a Breakfast group of female pensioners who had been studying English together for twenty years.
Not only is English a popular subject to study in one's leisure time, but also in schools. English is taught at an early age in schools, is constantly heard on the radio and on TV, with the advantage of TV programmes having Swedish subtitles instead of dubbing, so the TV and radio series of 'Working English' aims at an audience already well-grounded in the English language. Furthermore, the content covered in the programmes relates to the working world of offices, factories, international trade fairs, and assumes that its audience will be from similar backgrounds or have intentions of working in an administerial, secretarial or managerial environment, with English as a lingua franca.
In Scandinavia and Finland it is natural and more convenient to speak English with one another because although Danes can readily understand Swedes, and Swedes and Norwegians can understand one another, Swedes have more difficulty understanding Danes, and Finnish being a Finno-ugric language, is not shared by the other nations. Hence the high instrumental motivation to learn English for business.
| DESIGN AND CONTENT OF 'WORKING ENGLISH' |
The aim of the course is to see and hear people working in an authentic European setting. Since the course is targeted at a Scandinavian audience, most of the accents of the participants will be familiar. Even the lack of facial expressions as exemplified by the Finn from the Natural Clothing shop would be expected. However, for non-Scandinavian viewers these paralinguistic features, and the interview with the President of Iceland, Vigdís Finnbogadottir, for example, could be exploited in a cultural-awareness raising exercise. One section per unit in the course book is devoted to cross-cultural considerations, but looking from outside of Scandinavia.
Before moving on to describe and evaluate the contents of the video programme, I would like to make an observation which illustrates some differences between Swedish and British paralanguage, that is, the use of 'um'. Sections on gestures, body language and using 'mmm' and 'um' are included in the course book, and they are indeed important features of interpersonal communication. In the latter exercise (Unit 4), however, there are no listening exercises on the cassette to provide a model or offer a way of knowing if the learner using the course book as self-study is able to confirm or check that the appropriate intonation was used. The use of 'mmm' is in fact not explained. It means either 'yes, I've understood, go on', or 'can you repeat that?'. However, the opposite response is often effected because of the differences in pitch since Scandinavian languages have a narrower pitch range than English (Swan 1994:20). So the speaker will repeat the utterance just made instead of continuing with his or her discourse, or vice versa, in either case, confusing the listener's expectations.
Lonergan refers to the fact that "printed material gives us little information about how the language is spoken" (1984: 45), which is a good argument for including the sections on 'mmm' and 'um', etc, from the course book onto the cassette. If the materials are being used in a classroom then naturally the teacher or a student can model the utterances. Not only is it important to know how language is spoken, but learners must also be made aware of the appropriate register, and accompanying paralinguistic features, which the video can be used to demonstrate to great effect.
These observations can be incorporated into the lesson and would work best if held in a classroom setting so that there could be an interchange of ideas and experiences from the group members in order to increase the learners'sociolinguistic competence (Byram, 1997).
The topics covered in the TV and radio programmes are the same as those in the course book, dealing with making contact, the language of meetings, negotiations, presentations and trade fairs, with a strong emphasis on the functional syllabus. The format of the coursebook is consistent:
| 1 | snapshots - stills from the video and phrases of the target language for that unit available on the cassette |
| 2 | cross-cultural considerations |
| 3 | a reading text and comprehension questions |
| 4 | listening (needs the cassette) |
| 5 | phrases fill-in (refers to the phrasebook) |
| 6 | pairwork speaking activity |
| 7 | up to an average of 15 sections giving situational English practice using phrases from the phrase book, and incorporating other tasks in a game format, quizzes or self- questionnaire, and role plays. |
The contents of the TV programmes relate to the material covered in the course book but do not explicitly ask the learners to make references to it. Neither do the exercises in the course book need to be completed while viewing. Instead the learner is directed to the cassette or phrase book.The exercises are not as a direct consequence of the broadcasts, but certainly, spin-offs. The overall design of the series incorporates nearly all the elements of early video materials, as mentioned in Unit 1 of Module 355, namely frequent short bursts of functional items at various levels of formality, as was found in Video English (British Council: 1982/3); 'authentic-looking "situations "'as in Headway video material (Falla:1993); the comic sketch format of the Grapevine video series (Viney, P & Viney, K: 1991) combined in the form of a 1920's style silent movie scene with accompanying piano; talking heads interviews ; but there is no story line approach, which was popular in the 1980's.
The authors, it seems, were also aware of the value of chunking, and therefore each programme is divided in the same way into four main sections and four sub-sections. For programme 3, 'On Behalf of Our Company' the chunking of language input (without explicit reference) is as follows:
| Appointments Scenes: A good reception: addressing receptionists& receiving visitors Phrases (as captions) from the above scenes Silent movie sketch (Receiving aliens) Interviews: receptionists talk about their jobs and appearances |
| Presenting your workplace Scenes: Welcoming visitors Phrases (as captions) from the above scenes Silent movie sketch (Welcoming Everyone) Interviews: The President of Iceland and an astronaut |
| Giving information Scenes: related questions and finding out Phrases (as captions) from the above scenes Silent movie sketch (Key Questions -at a used cars salesroom) Interviews: A Commerial Director, a Public Relations Officer and a Marketing Communication Manager discuss the type of tour groups they prefer, and how to handle questions. |
| Concluding Scenes: thanking people for their attention By the way - an anedote Concluding ... ending on visitors to the Maas Brewery sampling the product in a pub and the programme fades out to the strains of "It's a braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht..." |
| VIEWING TECHNIQUES |
The last two sections are longer, with the conversations containing denser information of the product- making process of beer and chocolates, both manufactured in Belgium, and an explanation of working in a modern high-tech office, in Finland , referred to as the 'Office of the Future'. After each clip of dialogue / scene / captions / sketch there is an image of common features at a funfair, e.g. a big dipper or carousel, or as at the beginning, a telephone ringing, to mark the end of each language item, and provide an ideal place to stop the tape.
The fours 'sections' outlined above are suitable for chunking. Each 'sub-division' giving us the target language from material already seen and heard acts as reinforcement, so that we go from global viewing to the specific, thus enhancing aural comprehension. The problem of video length (MacWilliam, 1996, ELTJ40/2 ) is well-met in 'Working English' . Although the TV programme follows the usual half-hour format, each 'sub-section' does not exceed the six or seven minutes that was considered the "optimal maximum for native- speaking viewers". 'Working English', in short, meets the criteria to fulfil MacWilliam's desire that:
"it should be possible for the language-teaching profession to create video which is both authentic, in the sense that the language is not artificially constrained, and, at the same time, amenable to exploitation for language-teaching purposes."
However, problems affecting aural comprehension may occur if the viewer is watching alone and without guidance because he or she may lack strategies for effective viewing. As Longeran (1984:6) stated "more language learners will be experienced in passive television viewing". I have encountered students who regard watching a video as 'wasting' valuable class time, and claim that it could be better done at home. Presumably, their prior experience had been of being exposed to lengthy uninterrupted viewing which, for them, lacked a purpose, or perhaps the teachers wanted to mask their own lack of linguistic skills, and use the video as a "major-job operation" (Kennedy: 1983). The fact that the language-teaching broadcasts "are designed to be seen in one sitting, with no interruptions, no replays, no slow motion" (Lonergan 1984 :8) probably encourages teachers untrained in using video to show the video straight off for the reason that 'it is only half an hour, so it will not be too taxing on the learners, and some of it will sink in anyway'. There again, learners may consider the teacher stopping and starting the videotape too often as disruptive, especially if they are caught up with the story in the video, again because of passive TV viewing habits. To prevent boredom and permit learning to take place the language learner needs to view actively.
The greatest advantage of video is that it is something which is seen and heard with the option of doing both or one or the other, and repeatedly. We combine both elements automatically to make meaning clear for ourselves as Stephen Pinker remarks:
"When we are comprehending sentences, the stream of words is transparent; we see through to the meaning so automatically that we can forget that a movie is in a foreign language and subtitled."(Pinker,1994: 21).
It is interesting to note that he uses 'visual imagery' with words such as 'transparent' and 'sees through' , 'movie' and 'subtitled' (something we read, another visual element) when making his point that we can understand what we hear because of our innate grammar. This reinforces the point that we need both components for successful comprehension.
| CONCLUSION |
The design of 'Working English' has taken into account the visual and aural components of TV/video and offers short sequences of the target language presented in a well-contextualised setting where the learner sees and hears the target language in use. The visual component only is offered in the one minute 'silent movie' sketches, which come after the scenes for global viewing and captions of the target language, and before the interviews section. This is perhaps to add a restful, light-hearted touch since viewing is meant for entertainment as well as educational purposes. It is, however, not strictly viewing without sound because of the piano music. Neither are the situations unreal or absurd enough to be funny. Furthermore, the shots of the fairground are somewhat irritating and the connection with the main purpose of the programme is not clear. This detracts somewhat from the overall high quality of the series, which otherwise meets Arcario's criteria for selecting video materials (Stempleski & Arcario: 1991).
The target phrases are well presented in communicative situations, which contain enough visual clues to leave the learner to focus on listening. There is sufficient time to jot down the target phrases, thus avoiding the heads-down problem. The input is comprehensible. The interviews and situations are authentic (except for the scripted 'silent movie' slots), and the speech delivery is clear, although a little measured. The non-native English speakers make pronunciation and grammatical errors but these do not interfer with meaning. In fact, it can be motivating and encouraging for EF learners to realise that successful communication is attainable and not hampered by the odd mistake. Furthermore, it is not essential to use a native speaker as model. Byram gives two reasons for criticising the native speaker model because of "the problem of creating an impossible target and consequently inevitable failure", and secondly, that it "would create the wrong kind of competence" leading to, at worst, "linguistic schizophrenia", (Byram, 1997:11) if the overly ambitious learner were to abandon one language for the sake of another.
| BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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