Using Instructional Video to Teach Culture to Beginning Foreign Language Students

Abstract

This investigation examines whether foreign language (FL) students learn cultural information embedded in videos. Fifty beginning French students participated. They viewed eight targeted videos as part of their multimedia-based curriculum. A pretest and a posttest assessed long-term gains in overall cultural knowledge and in the learning of little "c" culture (practices) and big "C" culture (products). Eight postvideo tests measured short-term retention of culture in each of the eight videos. Oral dialogues tested students' ability to interact culturally appropriately in a communicative setting. A questionnaire analyzed student perceptions of cultural learning. From pre- to posttesting, results indicated a significant gain in overall cultural knowledge. Posttest scores were significantly higher than pretest scores. Pretest and posttest scores were significantly higher for little "c" than for big "C." On the postvideo tests, measuring short-term retention of culture, there was no significant difference between types of culture retained. Regarding oral performance, students performed culturally appropriately more than 60% of the time. Students perceived that the videos contained more little than big "C" culture and that they learned more little "c." Results support using video an effective technological tool for presenting culture in the FL classroom.

Using Film in the L2 Classroom: A Graduate Course in Film Pedagogy

“…Beyond the effects illustrated by Herron and colleagues (, , ), there are many advantages to authentic video in L2 teaching. The most basic are availability (via the Internet, for example) and relative low cost.…”

“…Researchers have investigated the effects of integrating video in L2 French classrooms at the beginning (Herron, Corrie, Cole, & Dubreil, 1999;Herron, Dubreil, Cole, & Corrie, 2000) and intermediate levels (Herron, Corrie, Dubreil, & Cole, 2002). In both cases, they found signifi cant gains in cultural knowledge over the course of a semester in which 10 (Herron, Corrie, Cole, et al, 1999) or eight (Herron, Dubreil, et al, 2000;Herron, Corrie, Dubreil, et al, 2002) videos had been incorporated into the curriculum. Their results, taken together especially, suggest that fi lm in the L2 classroom is benefi cial for learners in a measurable way.…”

Development of an integrated GIS and land use planning course: impacts of hybrid instructional methods

“…In this research, a quantitative analytical method was chosen to monitor student performances between the three academic periods considered in this research (i.e., 2011, 2012, and 2013). A review of the literature suggests that the most commonly applied method to assess the impacts of technologies on student performance is the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA; Blanchard et al, 1998;Herron et al, 2000;Mahdjoubi & A-Rahman, 2012;Zhang & Chawla, 2012;Zhang et al, 2006). Other frequently used methods included x 2 and Kruskal -Wallis test (Fagin & Wikle, 2011), and t-test (Taylor et al, 2012).…”

“…Instructional videos have recently been applied in different educational fields, such as nursing (Chandler & Hanrahan, 2000), medical science (Zhang & Chawla, 2012), architecture (Mahdjoubi & A-Rahman, 2012), engineering (Zhang et al, 2006), product marketing (Huarng, Yu, & Huang, 2010), cultural studies (Herron, Dubreil, Cole, & Corrie, 2000), motivation building studies (Kalichman, Cherry, & Browne-Sperling, 1999), and dairy health management (Vidya & Manivannan, 2010). Generally, these studies have shown that when used in moderation, a video can improve the learning experiences by providing the learner with a detailed visual description of the concept being taught.…”

“…Numerous studies have used student performance as an indicator to evaluate the effectiveness of introducing technology-enhanced instruction method (Blanchard, Behrens, & Anderson, 1998;Herron et al, 2000;Mahdjoubi & A-Rahman, 2012;Willson, 2008;Zhang & Chawla, 2012;Zhang et al, 2006). For example, in a longitudinal study, Willson (2008) compared student performance as measured on scores on a final comprehensive exam between pre-and post-implementation of hybrid instructional methods.…”