Italia 2000 Video Software on CD
Pedagogy and Design
The chief feature of the software is linking video footage into language
learning exercises. To complete an otherwise conventional CALL exercise,
students can view appropriate video segments provided for each question.
They can look at these segments as many times as they need to, with or
without subtitles. Thus, through completing the exercises and viewing the
clip segments, students gain an understanding of the clip, to the point
where they can start using language learned from the clip and written
exercises in speech: the final "dialogue" exercise provided for most of
the clips allows them to attempt this on the basis of what they've learnt.
In addition, they also get a feel for "real" language, since the video
clips contain authentic Italian speech. To this end, source-language
subtitles are provided. Research suggests that they are a significant help
in video-based language learning (see notably Vanderplank's work on close
captions and teletext subtitles), and that subtitling can assist performance
in multimedia courseware (see Borras and Lafayette, The Modern Language Journal,
78, i, 1994).
The feel of the software is open and relaxed: it is assumed that
those using it are motivated enough to want to learn and explore.
No point scoring and deducting system is used. Answers and feedback
are understated rather than trumpeted. Anyone who wants to reveal
the answers without studying the clip can do so easily, but they will,
of course, learn nothing. Best results - in terms of language learning -
will come to those who choose to explore each exercise fully with the
facilities built in to the software, in a manner to expected of advanced
/intermediate level learners.
Navigation tools are clearly and consistently shown. You can move
forward or back along the trail of exercises for each clip using the
arrows in the bottom right corner. You can return to the unit menu of
exercises by clicking on the Menu button, and thereafter click on it
again to get back to the Menù Principale.
The current location - that is, unit number and name, and exercise number
and name - are shown centrally at the foot of the screen.
Navigation round the package should become familiar and straightforward to
students quite quickly, and thereafter become second nature, allowing
concentration on the clip and the language learning.
A Help facility is available (click the button marked Aiuto), explaining what to do for each exercise, and what the various buttons on display do. It is possible to
click on highlighted phrases in the help text, and see illustrations on
the main screen.
The choice of font is softer and less formal than those more usually
seen in computer programs. This lends a more relaxed and attractive feel
to the package whilst maintaining legibility at all times.
The font originally selected was Monotype's "Blueprint", and this has been used
on CD-1 and CD-2 within the academic project under the CHEST licensing scheme. For commercial publication, however, the terms and costs of licensing the font were too strict and too high, so instead one of the public domain
Microsoft fonts was selected:
Comic Sans MS. This web page uses Comic Sans if it is installed on your machine, and you can download it from the
Microsft Typography web site. As well as maintaining the attractiveness and legibility of BluePrint (perhaps even bettering it), it has the advantage of being already installed on many Windows 95 machines.
The colour scheme is limited to one major background colour, a blue, and two main foreground colours, yellow and white, with grey used to de-emphasize. Generally, yellow text or buttons mean that something happens when it's clicked. Yellow is also used when
textual answers are revealed, purely as a means of highlighting and
contrasting the answers from the rest of the display.
Advantages and disadvantages of digital video in language learning software
The key to using video in Computer-Assisted Language Learning
(CALL) software is the near-instantaneous call-up and playback
it offers. With video tape, finding a precise location involves
much fast forwarding and re-winding, making intensive use of video
in language exercises unwieldy. In contrast, digital video in
a software package can be programmed to run exactly as and when
it is required, repeatedly if necessary. It is this principle
of "random access" video files which makes the integration
of digital video into software such a success: teachers can specify
when video extracts should be made available to the student, and
exactly what those extracts should be.
One other advantage that the use of digital video offers in CALL
software is flexible subtitling: this can be done whenever the
teacher thinks it is appropriate, in the source or target language,
and added or removed as required by the students.
The production of video-based software expands the scope of video-based
language learning: video material can be studied more closely
and flexibly than ever before. In addition, the use of authentic
footage -- "real" Italian in this case -- enhances both
language learning and cultural understanding, things which are
of course closely intertwined in any case.
The disadvantages are that the quality of the video in use for
most CD-rom or Internet software is poor compared even to household
VHS tapes: its display area is limited to a few square inches,
and its appearance is much inferior. Full-screen high-quality
digital video is now the mainstay of large broadcasters such as
the BBC, but such quality still requires considerably more storage
space than a current CD-rom will ever be able to offer.
Within the Italia 2000 project, this disadvantage is offset by
the fact that students are expected to watch the source programmes,
either by television transmission or by viewing taped recordings,
before embarking on the CD software: the lesser-quality video
then becomes to some extent a reminder of the original programme
rather than a substitute for it. However the CD video quality
is such that students who have not seen the original programs
will find it quite adequate to learn from the software, and the small
size means that the exercises and the video display sit comfortably
together on screen.
There are 8 types of exercise featured on the CD software, and
they are discussed here to illustrate in detail how digital video
can be linked into language learning programs. Vocabulary exercises
ask students to identify words with the same or the opposite meaning
from lists of words featured in the clips, and some of these exercise
involve calling up the video directly. A few grammar exercises
build on the linguistic points the teachers wished to raise as
part of the software; these do not call up video footage directly
and are not discussed below. Comprehension exercises make considerable
use of the video footage available, and students are asked to
transcribe words, identify key details in the clips, evaluate
the veracity of statements, and re-order jumbled segments of the
clip. Finally, a dialogue exercise ties together much of the material
being taught by asking students to answer questions for themselves
using the specially-recorded interview clips.
The opening screen of the program on CD-1 offers the 13 units - corresponding
to 13 clips with 4 or 5 exercises - which comprise the software. CD-2 offers
10 such units. It is the navigational hub of the program.
Sub-Section menus/Video Review
Each of the units has its own menu page, which offers a video
screen to review the clip in full, with or without subtitles,
and a list of the exercises available.
The video is viewed by means of standard VCR-like control buttons
- play/pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, and so on. The option
of subtitles in Italian is particularly useful for those who are
new to rapid native speech. The use of digital video here is not
particularly radical, but in that students can review the clip
at leisure whenever they want to, it is an important part of the
software. Having watched the clip, students move on to the exercise
they want to work with.
In its basic form, Vocabolario, a column of
words or phrases is presented on the left of the screen, opposite
a set of gaps on the right. Students
play a short extract from the clip if they want to, and type in the gap a word from the clip
which corresponds to the word on left.
A variation, I contrari, is that the left-hand column contains items with
opposite meanings rather than corresponding ones, so that students
have to identify antonyms form the clip rather than synonyms.
In the early stages of the software design, vocabulary exercises
were envisaged as a tool to aid understanding of the clip, and
could usefully have been placed before the video review, to enhance
initial comprehension. Equally though it serves to pick out key
words used in the clip, and teach or reinforce their meanings,
so it is now placed after the video review.
Both exercises illustrate the
random access principle: the phrase containing the right answer
plays as soon as the button is pressed, and the student can press
the button to watch and listen to the extract as many times as
necessary. The teachers specify the exercise questions and the
extracts to be played, and the programmer implements their specifications.
All the comprehension exercises use the principle of random access
to the digital video clips. The basic comprehension exercise, Comprensione,
provides the transcription of an extract from the clip with key words or
phrases blanked out. Alongside each blank space is a video play
button, which the student presses as often as required to watch
the extract specific to that answer. The right answer is then
typed into the space provided.
A variation on this theme is asking the students to pick out
key details from the clip, Dettagli, such as names, dates, or other more
general information, and type in specific answers. Again, precise
extracts from the clip are available to help the student at any
time: as soon as the play button alongside each question is pressed,
the extract from the clip selected by the teacher is played. Linguistic
variations can be included here, such as re-wording a phrase in
the clip in a different tense.
While understanding of specific words and phrases is tested with
these comprehension exercises, more general comprehension can
be tested by means of true/false statements, Vero /Falso,
or multiple-choice endings to sentences, La risposta giusta.
In the case of True/False exercises, the
student plays an extract, and must then state whether the statement
provided about it is true or false. In the case of multiple-choice
endings, an extract is viewed in the normal way, then the student
must decide which of three possible endings to a statement about
the extract is the correct one.
Such exercise types are already well-known to language teachers,
but are here adapted for - and enhanced by - the use of digital
video on a random-access basis. One particularly effective re-working
of a standard exercise type is the reconstruction of a passage
which has been jumbled up, Ricomponi. As a written exercise, it involves
carving up a paragraph into shorter phrases, jumbling the phrases
up, and asking the student to re-compose the paragraph with the
phrases in the right order. As a video-based exercise, an extract
from a clip is divided up into separate segments, with each segment
allocated its own play button on screen. The segments are jumbled,
so that when they are played one after another, they are in the
wrong order. The students can watch each segment as often as they
like, and as comprehension increases, re-compose the segments
to make up the original, coherent extract in full, by dragging
the icon of the numbered segment into the frame provided. The
result can be evaluated as work is in progress, and on completion,
the extract can be viewed in full. This exercise requires comprehension
skills, including an appreciation of non-verbal communication, and considerable linguistic ingenuity on the part of the student. A truly video-based implementation, as opposed to
a textual implementation which involves transcriptions, requires
this effective combination of digital video and software engineering.
Having completed the various exercise types available for each
clip, the final exercise on offer is one which draws together
the knowledge gained from the clip and the work carried out, and
gets students to speak Italian: Dialogo. Video plays a key role again,
as the students are taking on the role of interviewee in clips
recorded specially for the project (in contrast to the main clips,
which are authentic material from Italian broadcasters).
First, the student can play the whole interview in full. Next,
there are play buttons for each of the questions which make up
the interview. When a button is pressed, the individual question
is re-played, and then the student can go on to record an answer,
using a displayed written prompt for guidance if necessary. The
answer provided in the clip is also available: students can compare
their own efforts to it, and re-record their answer as much as
they want.
This procedure mimics a classroom exercise in which pairs of students
practice speaking by asking each other set questions, but has
the added advantages that native speaker responses are available
for comparison, and that students can work on the exercise when
they like and as often as they like.
Exercise construction: notes for teachers
Once software templates were established and tested in CD-1, it was possible to instruct teachers quite precisely on how to prepare further exercises for CD-2. The aim was to pass exercises to the software engineer which could be built into the software templates straightforwardly, whilst leaving the teachers free to choose the pedagogical content of of the exercise. The language of the document is non-technical, and describes exactly the materail required for each exercise type.
This approach helped greatly in the preparation of CD-2. Subsequently, it has helped with the preparation of other CALL software within the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages in the University of Cambridge, and may yet be adopted elsewhere. There is a link to the document for general background interest, and to illustrate how technical and linguistic staff
finally arrived at a formula suitable for designer, teacher and student. It gives information
on each exercise type mentioned in the previous section.
Italia 2000 exercises: notes for Teachers
main contents
| introduction
| Pedagogy & design