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Using digital video for modern languages
Principles of teaching
The motivational appeal of digital video cannot be denied and students will always be keen to work with a camcorder or a mobile phone with video capability. For the teacher of languages, digital video can be much more than a way of motivating and engaging students. Used with a clear purpose digital video can be effective in improving language performance and changing the way learning takes place.
Digital video can be used in many ways to improve target language performance:
- Focus on pronunciation and speaking
- Role plays
- Point and speak:
- News bulletins/out-and-about reports/weather forecast
- Interviews of a 'celebrity'
- PowerPoint presentation to the class
- Reading poetry aloud to develop expressiveness
- Exploring GCSE topics such as home or pets, or leisure time activities
- Drama: scripted with a simple dialogue
- Documentary: footage with a voice over on social themes such as youth culture, local community issues, urban change and so. These themes might be exploited successfully with video at AS or A Level.
- Interpretative: exploring a mood, or concept such as happiness, or summertime.
- Ads, information, promotion: Our school
- Instructional, guidance, reference. There is cross-curricular potential here.
Digital video clips can be used when teaching the whole class using the interactive whiteboard. Clips may be created on camcorders or mobile phones and can be of holidays abroad, exchange trips or the local community or area. They may also be obtained from partner schools abroad as part of a resource-swapping exercise, or created in school by Foreign Language Assistants and stored on the school network as a resource or built into presentations or interactive materials created with authoring software. Examples of the latter can be found at Ashcombe Language College.
Digital video can be very effective in helping students to improve language performance in a novel and engaging way so long as the purpose of the activity is clear to all concerned from the outset. The teacher should share objectives with students. The teacher might want to improve one or more of the following:
- Pronunciation
- Language awareness
- Confidence in speaking
- Memorisation skills
- Learning skills
- Motivation
- Creativity
Additionally it may be important to
- raise the profile of modern languages in the school
- place target language use in a meaningful context where there are goals to achieve
- develop collaborative skills
- promote critical skills, whether through self-assessment or peer assessment
While video is a useful resource for a teacher to use, for students it is a means to self-improvement in many of the areas outlined above. For this to happen, students must be prepared to
- draft and re-draft scripts paying close attention to accuracy
- research for extended language to meet the needs of their script
- re-take shots to improve pronunciation and intonation
- develop memorisation skills
- work collaboratively and stay within allotted roles as director, camera operator, editor etc
- develop planning and organisational skills: clear storyboards, planning and listing shots, organising props, checking equipment etc
- be decisive when editing, sometimes sacrificing cherished footage
- develop technical skills
- accept that working with video is time-consuming and requires extra effort and team spirit
For those who accept these demands the effects can be very positive. Research has shown that working with digital video
- increases motivation and engagement
- develops literacy skills:
- Students understand better such issues as narrative, character, genre, and plot
- Students improve the effectiveness of their communication by focusing so closely on language within the tight parameters of video production.
- Students develop an improved understanding of the relationship between language and image
- opens up the potential of cross-curricular uses
- develops literacy skills:
- Working with text, image, and objects
- Problem-solving
- Negotiation
- Planning and organisation
- Collaboration
- Prioritisation and decision-making
