Firstly, this work will elaborate on the importance of listening comprehension and refer to further paralinguistic features that are required to understand video material. Furthermore, it will give reasons to incorporate videos in the EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom. In the analytic part of this paper, it will deal with the contradictory findings of some selected studies on captioned videos. It will additionally elaborate different approaches and suggestions for foreign language teachers and their teaching.
In recent years, the media have developed rapidly and in many ways. In the same way, there have been many changes in foreign language teaching. From voice recordings, radios to videos, the way teaching is organized has changed and is changing constantly. Ever since excerpts from a radio recording and voice recordings were introduced into foreign language teaching, they have been carefully selected by teachers and embedded, for example, in a task or exercise; learners listened attentively to the audio and tried to solve the task set.
But how do you proceed with a video, which offers a visual and an auditive form of representation? Despite much research and knowledge, some questions about the relatively new medium of video remain unanswered. One of these questions is the usefulness of captioned videos.
Table of contents
1. INTRODUCTION
2. LISTENING COMPETENCE AND PARALINGUISTIC FEATURES
2.1. Listening Comprehension
2.2. Paralinguistic features
3. REASONS TO INCORPORATE VIDEOS INTO THE EFL CLASSROOM
4. STUDY AND LITERATURE REVIEW
5. PROPOSALS FOR WORKING WITH CAPTIONED VIDEOS
6. CONCLUSION
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Introduction
In recent years, the media have developed rapidly and in many ways. In the same way, there have been many changes in foreign language teaching. From voice recordings, radios to videos, the way teaching is organized has changed and is changing constantly. Ever since excerpts from a radio recording and voice recordings were introduced into foreign language teaching, they have been carefully selected by teachers and embedded, for example, in a task or exercise; learners listened attentively to the audio and tried to solve the task set. But how do you proceed with a video, which offers a visual and an auditive form of representation? Despite much research and knowledge, some questions about the relatively new medium of video remain unanswered. One of these questions is the usefulness of captioned1 videos.
Firstly, this work will elaborate on the importance of listening comprehension and refer to further paralinguistic features that are required to understand video material. Furthermore, it will give reasons to incorporate videos in the EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom. In the analytic part of this paper, it will deal with the contradictory findings of some selected studies on captioned videos. It will additionally elaborate different approaches and suggestions for foreign language teachers and their teaching.
2. Listening competence and paralinguistic features
2.1. Listening Comprehension
Traditional approaches to language teaching have mostly involved reading and writing and do not give much attention to listening and speaking skills (Raissi, Nor, Aziz, Zainal & Saleh, 2013, p. 326). However, Korkmaz and Güneyli (2017, p. 4669) argue that reading and listening are of considerable relevance, as productive skills can only be acquired through receptive skills. Listening and reading skills are often referred to as passive language skills, as opposed to the skills of speaking and writing (active skills). However, listening in a second language can be viewed as an active skill since listeners have to master a series of complex tasks, such as the differentiation between phonemes or the interpretation of stress and intonation (Ghoneim, 2013, p. 100). As mentioned before, L2 learners are scarcely able to acquire the skills of speaking and writing unless they learn the skills of reading and listening. Hence, all four skills should be incorporated into the EFL teaching process. Furthermore, the listening competence is one of the four main competences that are being taught in the EFL classroom. The skill is mentioned in the Common European Framework of References for Languages and is considered an essential skill for language learners in communicative activity (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 12).
This competence is especially important to students, as most of them want to be able to understand what is being said in communicative situations such as face to face communication, in videos, songs, cinemas or other recorded media. Spoken language, particularly in the just mentioned medias, often differs significantly from the written language (Harmer, 2007, p. 133). Not only does the listening competence enable students to understand utterances, it also benefits the students’ pronunciation: The more a student hears and understands the English language, the more they are able to “absorb appropriate pitch and intonation, stress and the sounds of both individual words and those which blend together in connected speech” (p. 133).
2.2. Paralinguistic features
In regard to this term paper, it is important to note that not only listening skills are a crucial part of understanding a video source. In the EFL classroom the educator should also teach listening-viewing competences. Although the current Kernlehrplan mentions listening viewing skills as a separate competence for the first time, it does not address all levels of listening viewing skill, but primarily focuses on the listening competence. Extra linguistic features are also largely disregarded (Ministerium für Schule und Weiterbildung NRW (MSW NRW), 2019 ,p. 32 ). Although no precise details are given, these competences should be integrated into the EFL classroom. More precisely this means that the teacher should support the learner’s abilities to perceive, process and interpret audio-visual material. Listening-viewing competences always include narrative, interpersonal and intercultural aspects. These paralinguistic competences are based on culturally and socially shaped perception and interpretation of facial expressions, eye contact, physical appearance, spatial behavior, pitch as well as tone of voice and features of kinesics such as posture and gesture (Council of Europe, 2001, p. 5). This work will not go further into these characteristics or describe them, they are nevertheless extremely relevant to the understanding of films and should therefore be named.
3. Reasons to incorporate videos into the EFL classroom
In the last centuries the media development has advanced considerably, especially in the previous century videos have become part of everyday life. Many online streaming websites provide entertainment especially for the younger population. In 2017, Krause et al. remarked that "with the development of technology, which changes both people's lives and their relationships within societies, education is also experiencing innovation and necessary reforms” (p. 4406). Not only cinemas and television but also the internet offer abundant opportunities to learn a language in a new and unconventional way. Therefore, these opportunities should be adapted into the EFL classroom through watching films, TV shows and authentic videos.
In recent years, the use of video in English classes has increased parallelly to the growing attention to communication skills. Since video is a rich and valuable medium, it is very popular amongst both students and teachers (Hemei, 1997, p. 45). Students find videos attractive, challenging and motivating, as videos add variety to the lessons. The videos can be integrated into the lessons flexibly by the teacher and provide addition to the content of the coursebook and lead to motivational and enjoyable written and oral activities and even projects.
Videos not only raise the learners’ motivation, but also have an enriching effect in terms of autonomous and direct language learning. Significant benefit ist hat videos, films and TV productions offer authentic language input, since they are made for native speakers (Katchen, 2002). Students hear colloquial English in real life contexts rather than artificial situations. This authentic visual context sometimes might be a step beyond the students’ current language level, but learners are able to use paralinguistic information to understand what is being said in the audio-visual material (Bouman, 1990, p. 48).
When teachers incorporate authentic video materials into their English lessons, students are able to directly acquire an even larger amount of cultural background information and emotional attachment to the learning materials. They can thus use their individual autonomy in language learning. By watching the video materials, students can immerse themselves in the lively atmosphere created through the video resources and understand the pragmatics of the language used by the characters. Videos offer an excellent opportunity to promote listening-viewing skills (and thus also paralinguistic features), Student Centered Learning (SCL) and Intercultural Communicative Competencies (ICC), which are becoming increasingly important. Alongside they also help to make the lessons more attractive.
4. Study and literature review
As mentioned before, videos in foreign language teaching are a popular instrument to teach the target language and a particular culture. The opinions about the effectiveness of captions in these videos are controversial. Some educators and researchers see advantages in captions, others consider them disturbing. A third group of researchers claim it makes no difference if captions are turned on or not. This work will summarize some already existing studies on this arguable topic. The studies often follow a similar procedure: First, the importance of the use of video in foreign language teaching is explained. The next step is to discuss the above-mentioned problems regarding the advantages and disadvantages of its use. In order to create transparency about the study, the specific methodology is explained. This includes participants, materials and the procedure of the study. Then the results are presented and discussed. These results serve as a basis for discussion and proposals for listening activities with videos in the EFL classroom later on in this work.
In 2002, Bird and Williams published the results of a solid experiment that studied whether and how captioned videos enhance the depth of processing for learners of a foreign language. The study focused on the bimodal (sound and text) presentation of words that were new to the learners, and how this affects the learning of the words. They presented these words to advanced English learners in three distinct Phases: (1) text with sound, (2) text without sound, and (3) sound without text (Bird and William 2002, p. 511). The researchers investigated the impact of these circumstances of learning new words, measured by how long students took to memorize and how long it took to recognize the words. Their results show that the presentation of words as in Phase 1 was more effective than the other two forms of presentations when it came to novel word and nonword recognition. Bird and William found that bimodal presentation does help when it comes to recognizing newly learned words.
Other researchers who are convinced that captions on videos are beneficial for the listening comprehension, wondered if there is a level of proficiency at which English learners benefit most from captions. Again, the results of the studies are ambiguous: Markham’s (1993) studies suggest that captions are more helpful when the content of the video is too complex for learners that have a higher level of proficiency. According to Markham, teachers of intermediate and advanced learners should present complex videos to their students with captions (Winke et al. 2010, p. 66). However, Guillory (1998) found that captions were more beneficial for learners of an elementary language level. She emphasizes that whole sentences were less beneficial in her studies, key words seemed to have a better effect on the comprehension of the video, due to a smaller cognitive load:
With smaller amounts of text in the visual channel, learners are less likely to encounter overload to multichannel processing and more likely to achieve fuller comprehension of the information coming through the auditory channel (97).
Further researchers such as Taylor (2005), examined the utility of captioned videos for elementary language level learners. In this study two different groups watched the same video material in Spanish with or without Spanish captions: the first group was in their first year of learning Spanish, the second group was in their third or fourth year of learning Spanish (pp. 423-424) . According to the results of this study, the learners with a higher level of proficiency (third- and fourth-year learners) who watched the video with captions performed better than the first group with a lower level of proficiency. However, there was no difference in the results between the groups who were exposed to the video material without captions (p. 425). In this study the researcher interviewed the leaners on their experience with captioned or uncaptioned videos. The students with lower level of language proficiency described the captions as distracting as they could not focus on the image, sound and the captions at the same time but did not have negative attitudes towards them. Taylor assumes that learners could benefit from captioned videos regarding their comprehension through practice and more frequent exposure (p. 426).
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1 This work distinguishes between captions and subtitles according to Markham’s and Peter’s (2003) definition: “Subtitles refer to on-screen text in the native language of the viewers that accompany the second language soundtrack of the video material. Captions refer to on-scree text in a given language combined with soundtrack in the same language” (p. 332).