Exploring the possibilities of interactive audiovisual activities for language learning

Abstract

Language teachers often resort to video to familiarise their students with contextualised linguistic and cultural aspects of communication. Since they tend to consider learning-by-doing more effective than learning-by-viewing, they try to further exploit this valuable asset through active tasks, such as taking notes or answering comprehension questions, silent viewing and predicting, ordering sentences, role-playing, analysing, summarising and describing (Zabalbeascoa et al. 2015). Advances in ICT have enabled more interactive options, with a view to expanding the range of available activities to include audiovisual translation (AVT) activities, such as subtitling and dubbing. This is the focus of ClipFlair, a project which developed a platform for creating and hosting such activities and a pedagogical proposal based on the idea that language learning can be enhanced with the use of activities asking learners to work from a video by inserting their own writing (captioning) or speech (revoicing). Based on this framework, a whole range of possible activities are open to teachers, beyond standard subtitling and dubbing. This paper starts out by briefly describing previous work done in the area and goes on to illustrate the ClipFlair conceptual framework including the educational specifications for the web platform, after the description of which concrete examples are provided in order to expand on the possible audiovisual activities that can be used in a language classroom and beyond. Finally, the paper gives an account of the learner survey carried out during the pilot phase of the project, which included feedback provided by more than a thousand learners and teachers.

Audiovisual translation in the foreign language classroom: applications in the teaching of English and other foreign languages

“…AVT tasks allow learners to interact with multimodal material that combines verbal (oral and written speech) and non-verbal elements (sound and image) in an innovative way. According to Sokoli (2018), "[m]ultimodal literacy…”

“…In this work, the term captioning is used -instead of subtitling -as hypernym to refer to "ANY thing done in terms of […] writing on the screen" as proposed in the ClipFlair theoretical framework (Zabalbeascoa, Sokoli, & Torres, 2012, p. 18). As stated by Sokoli (2018), "[a]dding written words includes processes such as standard interlingual subtitling but it can also refer to inserting captions for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, intertitles, annotations or speech bubbles" (p. 79).…”

The Effects of Intralingual Subtitles on Jordanian University Students’ Foreign Language Learning

“…To test which subscale was most noticeably advanced in the experimental group's performance (videos with captions), we conducted a One-Way ANOVA test for each subscale, and the results are given in Table 4 below. by Baños & Sokoli, 2015;Lertola & Mariotti, 2017;Lertola & Talaván, 2016;Sokoli, 2018. Based on the One-way ANOVA test results, a discussion of the results lends support to our research hypothesis spelled out in research question 1 as to whether intralingual subtitles promote college-level language learners' proficiency in English or not. As the results of Tables 3 and 4 show, significant progress was achieved in the experimental group's performance compared to that of the control group.…”

“…The added value of subtitles to the didactic pedagogical context was emphasized by Wang and Shen (2007), who argue that for something to be learned, it has to be noticed since visual contact enhances the spoken word, and teachers should utilize all media tools, including television, YouTube, videos, and all other Internet applications to best motivate students and enhance their language comprehension and acquisition, expressions, pronunciation, connotations, in addition to developing new words and idioms (Baños & Sokoli, 2015;Bravo, 2005;Danan, 2004;Lertola & Mariotti, 2017;Lertola & Talaván, 2016;Sokoli, 2018;Zanón, 2006). To this effect, Schröter (2005) argues that subtitling can be described as an additive translation.…”

The use of active subtitling activities for students of Tourism in order to improve their English writing production

“…In the FLL context, AVT research is a fruitful reality as can be seen in the multiple publications conducted at an international level (Baños piñero & Díaz Cintas, 2015;Martínez sierra & zabalbeascoa Terran, 2017;Chaume, 2018;sokoli, 2018;Díaz-Cintas, 2019;romero Fresco, 2019). There are several reasons why many of these studies are successful when carried out within the university context.…”