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VIDEO AS A TOOL FOR TEACHING BEGINNERS |
| CONTENTS |
| ELT VIDEO IN TAIWAN |
The use of ELT videos for adult language learners in Taiwan is a fairly recent development. Their usage by the local ELT establishment has generally been confined to discrete video courses which meet once per week in order to utilize the one day of the week that is not used by regular (i.e. non-video) courses which meet twice weekly. This satisfies the needs of teaching institutions to earn extra revenues as well as those adults who cannot commit themselves to attending class more than once per week.
Due to the fact that very few language teachers have had any formal training, the teaching of video is confined to the use of published video courses which include teacher and student guides. Teachers in Taiwan generally follow the instructions contained in the guides quite conservatively. In many cases the materials are not used to their fullest potential. This paper will consider the usage of one video course program.
| TEACHING SITUATION |
The institution which I work for provides in-company language training in the greater Taipei area. Like our language school competitors, we provide discrete video courses to students who have general interests. However, we also integrate published video courses with other suitable materials for those students who have special needs, such as improving telephone or presentation skills. There is no history nor plan to create a self-access program using video-based materials because of a lack of demand to justify the expenditure of resources.
Due to the selection of videos that we have invested in to date, our students are not eligible to take a video course unless their language ability has reached the intermediate level. The director of my company has been unwilling to invest more money in purchasing videos designed for beginner students because he would prefer that the students use the four hours per week to learn the material that is contained in their textbook. This way, they will progress to the intermediate level within 6 months. I disagreed with this zero-sum approach to curriculum design and thus, forged ahead with teaching Family Album, U.S.A. to a group of practically true-beginners in conjunction with the textbook Exploring English 1 which was originally designed to be used alone.
Family Album, U.S.A. is a 26 episode ungraded, serial-format video program which is designed for students who have studied English for at least one year. It is produced for both classroom use as well as television broadcast. Each episode is broken down into three acts which are further broken down into three scenes. I believed that the 20 lesson (40 hour) course could include 6 lessons using Family Album, U.S.A. and only 14 lessons of selectively chosen sections of Exploring English 1. This translated into 2 episodes of Family Album, U.S.A. with one act taught for each of the six lessons. I actually found it desireable to teach each act in only 90 minutes using the remaining 30 for the textbook.
I learned from my manager that his company was the first to use Family Album, U.S.A. in Taiwan. Before it was released in Taiwan, it was tested at 80 USIS sites overseas. The original version was cancelled because the actors' speech was too deliberate. Consequently, new actors, who were not told that the purpose of the video was to be viewed by ESL/EFL students, were used in order to produce a more authentic program. Therefore, Family Album, U.S.A. should be considered as only 'semi-authentic' because the producers intended that it should be viewed by ESL students in spite of the fact that the actors were not informed of this.
| CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION |
Below is a list of different purposes for using video (either off-air or authentic) for true beginners. First, it is important for me to explain what I mean by a true beginner and an advanced beginner student of English. Even though both have had at least six years of English classes in high school, a true beginner is generally not able to respond to elicitation of language or lexis by the teacher as opposed to an advaced beginner who is. Although this assessment is primarily concerned with oral production of language, it has served my company's needs of placing students into appropriate classes.
Language Work
Comprehension and Motivation
I will explain whether or not each of these purposes can be met with Episode 2, "The Blind Date," of Family Album, U.S.A. I have chosen Episode 2 because it would definitely be used for a beginner-level class. Moreover, Episode 1 was not chosen because my managers feel that it was designed to be a confidence builder for students who had never experienced an English video before. Thus, although success with Episode 1 would not be meaningful in their eyes, success with Episode 2 would be a significant achievement.
| EVALUATION OF THE VIDEO COMPONENT |
Language Work
Presenting language in context is one of the main functions of video in the ELT classroom. In acts 1 and 2, the foci are on the language of asking for and receiving directions, ordering at a restaurant, apologising, and making excuses. Each of these are presented in very realistic situations and may be easily exploited. For example, after viewing one of these segments silently, the teacher could elicit the language from the students. In the case of true beginners, they could respond in Chinese. The language could then be presented when the sound is turned on and then practiced with or without the print materials. The procedures for practice are exemplified below.
Controlled listening and oral practice is a bit of a problem with this material because of the speed of the actors' speech which, as mentioned earlier, is a result of the second production of the video. Listening to extracts of the video on an audio tape for this purpose is very demanding and may damage confidence among beginners. Fortunately, the core text, Exploring English 1, has a lot of controlled audio-based input for controlled oral practice. However, two of the three Focus-in sections - ordering at a restaurant (36:37 - 38:50) and occupations (44:42 - 46:30) - use music to teach language. Although the teacher's manual suggests that the students should be encouraged to sing along, I believe that the value lies in letting the students notice the rhythm of speech and the linkage of sounds between the words. The students could then be encouraged to reproduce the target language with more natural-sounding speech.
There are many situations when teaching and drilling new lexis is appropriate. This can be easily accomplished by pausing on an object or action and then eliciting or giving the target word(s). In addition, the drilling of taught language items is also apropos. For example, the language of introductions is a language item that was taught during the first two lessons of the session and it is present in act 3. The students could role-play by first studying their roles with the sound off and then perform in groups of three. More specifically, the first Focus-in section on receiving directions (29:50 - 31:49) is useful for drilling. It could be utilised by letting the video demonstrate how to give directions followed by the students repeating the directions to a student who is simultaneously tracing the path on the screen.
Comprehension and Motivation
Comprehension of content is facilitated by reducing the cognitive load of coping with visual and sound input simultaneously, by allowing the students to initially focus on the setting, the situation, and the characters (Allen 1985-90: 40). This makes teaching Family Album U.S.A. particularly useful because the most striking thing about the video is that it practically tells the story without any assistance from the aural or print components. While viewing silently, the viewer is able to construct a mental script which
"specifies the roles played by certain actors and the expected sequences of their actions.[It does] not normally specify the precise words that each actor will use" (Anderson & Lynch 1988: 14).
Constructing a mental script requires that students view the video actively or perhaps, more appropriately described, interactively. This interaction must be encouraged and honed in order to facilitate comprehension. The method that I favor is as follows: the students are shown an extract of the video without the soundtrack; then they are allowed to speculate about the content using their stereotyped knowledge of speaker, listener, place, time, genre, and topic (Brown & Yule 1983: 60-62); and they are finally shown the extract again with the sound on in order for them to confirm or adjust their global expectations (as expressed in their mental scripts) by considering the co-text of what has been said (Brown & Yule 1983: 63).
The teacher may determine the actual comprehension of beginners by allowing them to
"respond either in a non-verbal way (performing physical actions or marking worksheets, for example) or they might answer in their L1" (Anderson & Lynch 1993: 34).
By showing beginners that it is possible to use their limited linguistic knowledge to understand spoken English if they
"arrive successfully at a reasonable interpretation, and not process every word " (Brown & Yule 1983: 57),
motivation will certainly increase. The lesson here for the student is that their failure to achieve at English after at least six years of pulic education is due to their over-reliance of the bottom-up approach and near neglect of this top-down approach. This is not to say that it is not important to develop more linguistic knowlege for
"the research evidence suggests that all available sources of information are used, and probably simultaneously" (Anderson & Lynch 1988: 24).
The other role is to motivate the students by providing them with some knowledge of the country and culture which is presented in the video. In general, the Taiwan-Chinese who attend English classes are very keen to learn more about the west in general and America in particular. They are exposed to American TV programs and movies which are subtitled, an American radio station, and hordes of American businesspeople and residents. Family Album, U.S.A. does provide this exposure in a more authentic way than the movies or TV programs do. It is possible for the students to see what (some) Americans do when they receive unexpected guests, speak to elderly people, go out on dates, etc.
Before continuing, it is important to state the importance of establishing a purpose for viewing. Purpose-driven activities are closely associated with schema theory.
"A schema can be thought of as a mental structure consisting of relevant individual knowledge, memory, and experience, which allows us to incorporate what we learn into what we know" (Anderson & Lynch 1988: 14).
By establishing a purpose for viewing, the teacher is activating relevant schemata in the minds of his students. This can be applied to the two aforementioned goals. In the first case - speculating about content - the viewer is utilising her background knowledge (schema) of the situation to help in comprehending the events which will follow. In the second case - acquiring cultural knowledge - the viewer is comparing her preconceived ideas (based on her schematic knowledge) of what the characters will do in a given situation with what they did. The viewer may also compare how the American characters act with how Chinese people would perform in a similar situation and adjust her schematic knowledge to accommodate any differences that may arise from making these comparisons.
There has been much said about the potential for exploiting the visual component of the video program. However, there is one major flaw with how the video is presented - the preview, which is at the beginning of each act. The first time I viewed the preview without the support of the print material, I was confused. It seemed to me that it could be mistaken as events which happened prior to the scenes. There are many programs on TV which show what happened in previous episodes rather than what will follow. In fact, I didn't realise that what I saw was a preview until I saw the clip later within the scene. This gave me an unsettling feeling of deja-vu.
Because my students will watch only one act per week at most, it is important that they be able to recall what happened previously. A classroom discussion in English is not possible due to their level, but they are able to answer yes/no questions or information questions which utilise the two present tenses. Consequently, a better way to do this is to show them clips of what happened in the previous acts. This will help them re-activate relevant schemata which will serve as the starting point for comprehension. Therefore, I conclude that the preview should not be used.
| EVALUATION OF THE PRINT COMPONENT |
Comprehension and Motivation
As we can see from the print materials included in the appendix, there many activities which aid the students' efforts at comprehension. According to Anderson and Lynch (1993: 13), there are three sources of information which are used in comprehension. They are schematic knowledge, knowledge of the context, and systemic knowledge (of the language system) of which some or all should be activated for comprehension to occur.
For example, rather than use the preview for act two, the students could re-view the last part of the first act. They should then be able to answer question, "Where are they going?" to which they would respond "to a restaurant." With the context set, it is possible to activate the student's schematic knowledge. The pre-viewing activity which I prepared required them to list the different kinds of foreign restaurants in Taipei and a dish that the nationality is famous for. After watching the first scene of the second act silently, they could activate their systemic knowledge of appropriate discourse at a restaurant by checking the following choices:
The waiter: What would you like?
Susan: I'll have the ___________.
or
The waiter: What do you want?
Susan: I want the _____________.
This activity compares the real language used at a restaurant with the language used at an inexpensive diner which was the language that they had learned previously in Exploring English 1. This activity is a variation of the print material for the preview for scene 2 (p.22 of the students' book in the appendix) and can serve as an introduction for the language work activities which follows. These activities will be dealt with in the next section of this paper.
The student's book has two activities (pp. 23, 28) which motivate viewer comprehension by focusing on certain aspects of the storyline that follow a similar check-the-box format. This format is most appropriate for beginners because "language output from the learner is kept to a minimum" (Lonergan 1984: 12). However, this format need not be the only option available for teachers of beginners who have a good understanding of their students' L1 to check comprehension. Because I understand Chinese, it is possible for me, as well as many of my colleagues, to monitor student discussions in L1 and judge comprehension. Thus, there are two activities (pp. 23, 27) in the student's book which can be used to encourage schema activation through speculation and discussion about the future events which follow a freeze-frame.
These formats will be compared with the formats used in some of the other activities which focus on language work.
Language Work
The students' book contains many activites which focus on language. Some of them are meant to be used with the video and others are meant to be spin-off activities to be used subsequently. This paper will only evaluate the former ones. The format of these includes: sentence completion (pp. 16, 24, 27), choosing the person or word (pp.16, 22), and matching language to a picture (p. 17).
The directions for the sentence completion activities indicate that the video should be shown before and/or possibly during the activity. In fact, I found that this is unnecessary because even beginners can make a reasonable guess based on the print material alone. We used the video to confirm the answers that they had written. The pictures on page 16 of the new lexical items may even be redundant if the teacher has already drilled them during a silent viewing.
Other examples of poorly designed activities are found on pages 16 and 22. These activities should not be used because they are focusing on the minutiae of the content and, moreover, are redundant to the better presented activities which follow (on the bottom of page 16 and the second Focus-in respectively).
The matching activity on page 17 is quite conducive to the formulation of script by the students. The problem with its presentation is that the freeze-frames provided in their books makes watching the video unnecessary. If desired, these pictures could be replaced by their respective counter numbers to ensure that the students watch the video.
| CONCLUSIONS |
"With the explosion of video technology, we must hope that fewer and fewer students, in the early stages, will encounter the foreign spoken language without the support of the visual environment"(Brown & Yule 1983: 86).
Thus, my managers should consider the benefits of using the Family Album, U.S.A. video course as a tool to complement the core text for our beginner level courses. This has been justified by demonstrating how the video either with or the print material can be used for both language work and as a means to motivate the learner by focusing on comprehension of the content. Resources must be allocated to create a better, more condensed print accompaniment to the video which focuses on the above purposes without making neither the video component nor the core textbook superfluous. It follows that it would also be necessary to train teachers how to use these materials to best teach video and language skills.
| BIBLIOGRAPHY |
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