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ELT Video Sequence Evaluation: |
| INTRODUCTION |
This paper evaluates a selection of commercial ELT video, plus print material, as required by the Educational Technology for ELT module of the M.Ed. in Educational Technology and ELT (distance mode) with Manchester University. The focus of this report is an extract entitled "Lasers in dentistry" from "Britain In View" (Dyson: 1994).
This report is divided into six main parts:
| 1.0 COMPONENTS |
One video containing 15 short (approx. 3 mins.) extracts and an accompanying resource book which, it is claimed, can be used alone or with the video.
| 2.0 AUTHOR'S CLAIMS |
2.1 Target Learners
The book cover claims adults and secondary students are the target group. The use of the material primarily for ESL/EFL students is only highlighted later with reference to 'group activities' when Dyson says it is "designed to help students make cross-cultural comparisons between Britain and their own countries."
Learners are required to be of "intermediate level upwards".
2.2 Content
The content is taken directly from news stories presented by a BBC regional newsroom. All features are related to Britain and concern issues including the environment, education, the arts and recreation.
The author claims the video to be "authentic" and she further defines this with the statement "[video and press extracts] have not been adapted in any way for English language teaching"(p5).
2.3 Approach
The author's objective is to communicate elements of Britain's culture:
"Each clip … features an aspect of life in contemporary Britain likely to be of interest to learners and teachers of English." (p5)
With respect to Willis' (1983) roles of video, Dyson appears to have cast this material as a source of information, specifically cultural.
Along with this focus on the intrinsic cultural value of the material, Dyson says the transcripts and print units "have been provided to help learners and teachers understand and enjoy the source material."(p5)
It is significant that Dyson places importance on viewing such off-air material as a native-speaker would; that is, out of interest in the message contained within the broadcast. The importance of enjoyment along with understanding is asserted by Tudor (1987:204) who quotes Krashen's language acquisition prerequisite of low-anxiety factors. He comments that excessive "purposefulness", and the lack of entertainment associations, may distract from the objective of developing understanding of the whole meaning.
Can we therefore expect print support designed to develop extensive listening skills with emphasis on top-down processing of the material? Dyson leaves it to the teacher to create such objectives, saying the video extract itself "can be played and replayed for more intensive listening such as listening out for any numbers that were used."(p5)
Another question worth posing concerns the degree of language, as opposed to cultural, learning intended. Valdes (1990:21) points out that often, even when the objectives of a teacher or materials writer are anything but the teaching of culture, cultural factors are taught. She refers to this as the "incidental approach to culture teaching".
Dyson's approach is not so much incidental, since this is a cultural package, but she aims to develop "understanding" of culturally-loaded material as opposed to 'teaching' culture.
Finally, the video sequences within each unit are arranged before the other materials and thus introduce themes that are developed in later tasks.
| 3.0 EVALUATION OF VIDEO |
3.1 Authenticity and language level.
The actual extract is off-air and intended for a native speaker audience; although it may be "scripted" insofar as the presenters have prepared beforehand. In addition, the language is idiomatic and light-hearted in style and presents a particular side of the British TV news report genre which "British native speakers are …assumed to know"(Brown and Yule, 1983:75).
However, Dyson has added a video still with text overlay immediately before the original sequence and there is no explanation as to its purpose. This overlay is entitled "Lasers in dentistry" with the text "New technology could take the fear out of a visit to the dentist." This detracts from the complete authenticity of the sequence by giving a lot away before the video has even started and calls into question Dyson's claim that the video has not been adapted "in any way".
3.2 Content format
This sequence is in newsroom report format. An opening talking head extract, in which a seated studio presenter introduces the report, is followed by video shots on location at a dentist's surgery with either a reporter talking over, or the dentist/reporter filmed talking. An advantage of this report is that the content does not rely on knowledge of local events and is not "rooted in the moment" (Allan, 1991:28).
3.3 Delivery and density of language
This sequence is largely clear, measured monologue, with limited paralinguistics such as gesture and facial expression. As such, it does not approach the density of spontaneous dialogue. Furthermore, the absence of such paralinguistic clues and the high language level would suggest that intensive exploitation should be minimised at intermediate level.
3.4 Visual and aural components
There is a large degree of simultaneous aural and visual in this sequence which is represented in Appendix I. Overall, the visual fails to support the message of the sequence. However, it does present the context of the dentist's surgery and offers visual representations of key vocabulary such as dentist, dental nurse, drill, injection and laser. The potential of the visual is limited to giving contextual clues and lexical items peculiar to this setting.
3.5 Chunking potential and wholeness
With reference to Appendix I, the extract can be chunked according to the following interpretation:
Hence, the material can be broken up into more manageable units, if required, which themselves form meaningful components of the whole sequence.
| 4.0 EVALUATION OF PRINT MATERIAL |
The print material considered here is Introduction: Notes for Teachers (p5), the Lasers in dentistry unit with video activities (p18), and a Transcript of the video sequence (p67).
4.1 Introduction: Notes for Teachers
The introduction is divided into four sections. I will discuss the first and third, which pertain to the video and associated print-based tasks.
The first paragraph in Using the Video loosely defines the purpose of the Background, Previewing and Comprehension activities in each unit and gives one or two instructions to teachers, which tend to be general in nature. The second paragraph highlights the possibility of using the material for intensive listening. The next two paragraphs would be more appropriate in a video resource activity book given these are ideas which aren't assigned to any video sequence. In fact, the sound and vision jigsaw idea would be very difficult to achieve given the lack of visual support of the 'story' in Lasers in dentistry.
The third section provides an overview of three activity types, which appear in each unit. Firstly, Comprehension, which is mainly described in terms of the range of question type. Next, Language Focus, which specifies the aim of getting students to produce written work while adopting "a particular point of view, or a particular style" (Dyson:5). Use of appropriate grammar and vocabulary is mentioned, although the way in which this should be generated from the material is not. In addition, this section brings to students' attention features of style and language manipulation. It is worth noting that Dyson uses terms such as "draws attention to" , "shows" and "helps…recognise" of the activities. Thus, sensitising students to these items rather than encouraging active use of such language is the aim. In the final section, Oral focus uses the video as a stimulus for discussion or role-play.
4.2 Lasers in dentistry
Instructions
Instructions on how to use the material are not a part of the support material for the specific sequence. This is unhelpful to students in self-access, despite Dyson's claim in the Introduction: Notes for Teachers (page 6) that it could be used so. In addition, there is no cueing advice in the materials or a counter on the screen.
Task headings do not all appropriately refer to a stage in viewing strategy. For example, Pre-viewing implicitly means that the contents of this section are to be considered before watching, but Video does not identify the intended use of this section.
Analysis of Tasks
Overall, the tasks appear to start with Pre-viewing discussion, move into focusing on gist or holistic comprehension in Video and then narrow into activities analysing communicative style and idiomatic features in Language Focus. Finally, there is a role play.
Background
Straight text which requires nothing of the students.
Pre-Viewing
A series of direct, open questions intended to focus students on the video.
Video
Five open "comprehension" questions, ranging from general to specific. Dyson recommends the playing of the video once for general comprehension (page 5) but it is unclear whether these questions are to be used for this.
Language Focus
The "What is a chairside manner?" task is not presented well, as it is not clear to students what to do or how to do it. Surprisingly, Notes for Teachers emphasises the use of the transcript in the language focus tasks, when in fact there is a section of the video which should be used. Are students supposed to merely copy the uses of the laser from paragraph 2 of the transcript? Another question concerns how the previous stages provide input to this language production phase.
The following three Language Focus tasks seem to isolate one or two stylistic differences which require a degree of cognitive involvement from learners but do not reward students through a structured opportunity to use some of the target language. Dyson concedes this possibility by stating: "[tasks in this section]…can be developed in more detail by the teacher…"(p6)
Role Play
The role play section focuses on student production of language appropriate to a dentist and nervous patient. The first task in language focus appears to form a preparatory stage for this activity.
Approach
We will consider Dyson's approach in terms of how students' existing knowledge is used with respect to topic, genre, and setting, or place and time (Brown, 1990:154-155). These factors form the basis of experiential knowledge which help to narrow down expectations of what will follow (ibid: 155). Following this the print material will be analysed to see how it attempts to compensate for lack of knowledge or language (ibid:155).
In addition, we will investigate whether, and to what degree, active viewing (Lonergan: 1984) and holistic comprehension strategies are encouraged. The framework of this analysis is as put forward in Motteram and Slaouti (1996 e:22)
Activating Learners knowledge of topic, setting, genre and appropriate language
Dyson claims "The background notes set the clip in context…"(p5). What we can see in this sequence is that the background section inputs cultural information but doesn't motivate the learners to provide anything with respect to the topic, setting or genre.
The central theme of the use of lasers in dentistry to assuage patients' fears is raised in learners through the pre-viewing section. The questions are likely to produce vocabulary associated with feelings about a visit to the dentist. This is an emotive issue and I feel intrinsically interesting to students. The "Pinpoint the precise areas of dislike" task could result in the generation of key vocabulary such as "drill" and "injection". Unfortunately, it is left to teachers to recognise this aim and ensure such vocabulary is elicited.
However, the idea of the use of a laser is perhaps given away far too early in the print material and in the commentary. A vision only playing before the pre-viewing activity could help students identify general setting, topic and the genre of news reports, which is not addressed by the print material at all, prior to focusing on the deeper emotional and technological issues.
Compensating for learners' lack of knowledge of topic, setting, genre and appropriate language
The author intends background to "explain difficult words and references"(p5). On examining the extent of compensation this section provides, it is limited to information that is not essential to learners' understanding of this extract. It may be more useful to present a pre-teach activity focusing on expressions, a lot of which is quite idiomatic and not supported by the visual element of the video. Alternatively, such key vocabulary items as 'decay' and 'mouth ulcers' should be introduced so as not to compromise the 'understanding' and 'enjoyment' intended, especially at lower levels.
Creating a context for active viewing
The pre-viewing section is meant to "[help learners] make predictions about what is to follow"(p5). This may be the intention but I feel that in this extract the pre-viewing questions tend to focus on students' feelings as opposed to predictions of the video content. I accept that some students will naturally watch, as a result of pre-viewing, in order to confirm or compare the legitimacy of their own feelings. However, the task could directly instruct the students to watch and note any contrasts with what emerged from the pre-viewing discussion.
Providing for holistic viewing comprehension
The holistic meaning is targeted through Video questions 2, 3 and 5 and to some extent the central issues are reflected in pre-viewing. A more effective exploitation could remove all video sections that summarise the sequence and encourage students to produce a summary themselves. This would create very clear active viewing conditions allowing students to demonstrate their understanding of the whole sequence.
4.3 Transcript
The transcript seems incomplete in that speakers are not listed or assigned to its sections. The talking head introduction to the report seems to be highlighted in bold, but again it is not clear who is speaking.
| 5.0 RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION |
Overall, the target in terms of learner level and aims is too broad to enable the supporting print material to be equally effective.
For intermediate level especially, the print support falls short of encouraging learners to generate understanding with the aid of their own experiential knowledge. In fact, the sequence contains visuals that will confuse students unless they have the opportunity to establish genre and setting beforehand. MacWilliam (1986), by reference to Vernon, Gunter and Severin, confirms that irrelevant simultaneous visual cues cause a loss of information from the aural channel.
Considering the aims of enjoyment and understanding, Appendix II shows a sample lesson plan for an intermediate class. In this exploitation, greater use is made of the visuals to prepare students for the full report by stimulating appropriate schema. In addition, the disadvantages of being given an overview of the report before viewing (studio presenter and title still) are masked in order to encourage speculation, and establish a strong but enjoyable reason to watch culminating in production of the holistic meaning.
Considering the package for self-access, appropriate viewing strategies are not encouraged due to the absence of specific viewing advice. In addition, I feel the video material would better serve Dyson's pedagogic aims with print support featuring unambiguous tasks presented through clear instructions for class and self-study use.
Finally, on a positive note, Dyson's choice of material in this case appears to have been balanced and well informed. The sequence is authentic, yet not overwhelming in language level, density or delivery, and the content imparts a cultural message while not being too alien with respect to learners' own backgrounds.
| 6.0 BIBLIOGRAPHY |
| APPENDICES |
Appendix I: A breakdown of aural and visual components
Visual shot | Aural | Counter(approx. seconds) | Poss. Chunk | Visual supports message |
Title still with text | silent | 0 - 7 | ||
Studio Presenter talking head. | Introduction of sequence: idea of laser used in dentistry to reduce fear/pain | 8 - 25 | no | |
Waiting room and patient walking to surgery door. | Visit to dentist is traumatic to even the steeliest. | 26 - 35 | 1 | no (only context setting) |
Mouth shot with dentist using an injection | silent | 36 - 38 | 1 | as above |
Presenter with a drill and laser | Only 30% visit dentist regularly because of fear of needle/drill. Dentists welcome the laser. | 39 - 56 | 1 | context; lexis: drill and laser |
Dentist's hand shining laser on finger | A handful of dentists with laser say it's a revolution | 57 - 1.01 | 2 | lexis: laser |
Mouth shot with laser being used in surgery | Saying how it can be used in place of the drill/injection | 1.02 - 1.08 | 2 | |
Dentist sitting alone with a laser in hand | Saying patients are nervous because of injection and pain from drills | 1.09 - 1.18 | 2 | no |
Mouth shot with laser being used by dentist in surgery | Laser vaporises decay, no need for slow drill with vibration. | 1.19 - 1.51 | 2 | partly - running commentary from dentist |
Laser control panel | US-made laser can't replace drills/injections completely | 1.52 - 1.57 | 3 | no |
Mouth shot of dentist probing with instruments | Laser has spin-off effects: treatment of mouth ulcers/sensitive teeth. | 1.58 - 2.04 | 3 | no |
Dentist working on sunglass-wearing patient with a laser | Dentist talks through what he is doing: desensitising the teeth. | 2.05 - 2.19 | 3 | partly - running commentary |
Laser control panel | Equipment costs a lot | 2.20 - 2.21 | 4 | no |
Drills | 2.22 - 2.24 | 4 | no | |
Picture of surgery with patient, dentist and dental nurse. | This dentist plans to offer it on NHS at £30/filling | 2.25 - 2.35 (end) | 4 | no |
Appendix II: Suggested lesson plan for intermediate learners with the aim of holistic understanding and enjoyment.
Stage/Interaction | Procedure | Rationale |
Introduction: | Play only Studio Presenter and Waiting Room shots with sound off (no title still) | Establishing genre, creating speculation of setting and topic among SS. |
Pre-viewing Small groups/pairs | T asks: |
Creating expectations of content and engaging SS through personal experience. |
While watching | T asks SS to watch with sound, but without the studio presenter and the title still, to tick off the reasons for nervousness/fear and also the way the video suggests reducing the fear. | Limited load on SS to listen to confirm what has been established partly through visual and pre-viewing |
After viewing | SS asked to prepare the introduction to the news report which the studio presenter might say from their notes and what they have learned. (Elicit the important elements of such an introduction i.e. main summary of video content and use of present perfect to introduce news.) | Focus on reproduction of holistic message of the video |
Feedback | SS view the actual studio presenter and compare it with their own introduction. |
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