Loredana Comparone Martin and Dr. Michael D. Bush, French and Italian
Teaching authentic language in context has a vital role in foreign language instruction. Especially at an intermediate level, students need to be exposed to something other than simulated authentic discourse, defined by Geddes and White (1978) as “language produced with a pedagogical purpose.” (cited in Omaggio Hadley, 175)
Videos and DVDs represent today the best tool in the hands of a teacher to provide the classroom with unmodified authentic discourse, the genuine act of communication that takes place among native speakers (characterized by spoken conversational discourse, pauses, hesitations, corrections, fillers, etc.), offering the students an experience comparable to.
As emphasized by Dr. Bush of the Department of French and Italian in his article “Video for Language Learning,” videos are fun and motivating as they show the real life and language of the people, while serving an even higher purpose. Specifically, videos present the language in a context that allows students to extrapolate the meaning of unfamiliar words. Even more importantly, students learn to associate the words to their meaning directly in the target language, thus incorporating the new terms part into their active vocabulary.
Videos, however, require a planned strategy to be successfully implemented in the classroom. It is imperative to plan in advance what the focus of each lesson will be, the materials the teacher is going to need, what functions s/he expects the students to perform, and finally what kind of tools are going to be provided to the teachers and the students to make sure they succeed.
My main concern in developing this project was to create a series of tools that would allow me to use videos, and in particular the DVD of the Italian movie C’eravamo tanto amati, produced by BYU, to teach both the language and the culture through unmodified authentic discourse and in a way the students would find fun and interesting.
I had noticed in the past that students had great difficulty understanding and commenting on a scene from C’eravamo or other kinds of audio material presented to them, even if exposed to it more than once. As I found out by investigating recent findings and interviewing experienced teachers and experts in the field, teachers often fail to provide the students with adequate direction regarding the focus of the listening comprehension task. In the Student Guide I therefore included a series of outlines the students would fill in while watching each scene outside of class, targeting specific key words and phrases or aspects that would help them understand the most salient idea, situation or issue presented. On these they were also asked to elaborate using specific vocabulary and grammar structures highlighted, and targeting specific proficiency tasks. When asked in class to discuss the scene, the students demonstrated not only to have grasped the main ideas, but also to have familiarity with the vocabulary and grammar they had implemented. As a result, class time could be spent on sharing comments and personalizing the material rather than reviewing vocabulary or grammar.
Whereas at the beginning of the semester, activities generally assessed aural recognition of vocabulary and situations, by the end of the semester they focused on more detailed and openended questions. Despite the increased difficulty of the tasks, students performed at a higher level, showing improved listening comprehension ability and greater capacity to adapt to different styles of spoken Italian (inflections, accents, dialects).
The Teacher and Student Guides have already been included in a CD-ROM to accompany the DVD, and it will soon be accessible on the BYU Network as part of an interactive software program, both designed by BYU, to serve students of Italian here at BYU and in other academic institutions. A printed version of the guides will be available at the Bookstore for Italian 201 students.
My next step is now to concentrate on preparing outlines, models, and role-playing activities for those grammar principles I highlighted in the scenes. As I will be teaching Italian 201 during Fall 2001, I will be able to try different kinds of activities and add those that prove effective in the class to the Teacher Guide.