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Bonnie L. Hall
Iowa City West High School With the advent of new technologies, foreign language teachers are often provided a new medium with which to present and practice skill areas in the target language. One medium with enormous potential is the video cassette recorder, which has already become a standard classroom tool to instruct and entertain students. Commercial videotapes are available in many languages from varied sources. Videocassette recorders also make regular television programming an easy source to tap and bring into the classroom. These video tapes have a useful and definite role in foreign language instruction. The student viewer is expected to listen, understand and improve his/her listening skills. Skill improvement happens only if the student can concentrate sufficiently on the target language to understand a meaningful segment of the tape. Keeping a student mentally on a task is difficult and watching television is no longer the novel activity that it once was in a classroom setting. Viewing an entire movie in the target language is an activity more intense than the majority of high school students can begin to handle. Even thirty minutes requires more concentration than most can give. In creasingly I have observed that my students are «tuning out» when a videotape is turned on and little or no learning is taking place. Some new direction for this technology is needed. This is where the camcorder comes in: a movie camera with which the student can make his/her own videotape! The foreign language classroom becomes a film studio and a new dimension opens in foreign language study. As technology has improved, most schools have added camcorders to their audio visual centers, and as they become more affordable, an increasing number of students has access to them at home. The cameras are easy to operate and are very portable. Consider the following example. My third year Spanish students were given an assignment to practice command forms by giving a demonstration to the class on how to do some thing. One eager group of four sophomore boys asked if they could videotape theirs at home over the weekend, as long as it was ready for viewing in class by the Monday deadline. The resulting ten minute video has gained a degree of fame in our school and has enlightened their teacher as to what is possible for a student with a camcorder. The boys began their presentation to the class in person with a short, controlled demonstration of some wrestling moves they had seen on a television wrestling program. They then referred the class to their videotape which they said (in Spanish) would illustrate the practical applications of their presentation. The videotape began with music which they had dubbed in from a television tape. The musical introduction was followed by an original computer graphic announcing the title (in Spanish) and the «stars» of the tape. On the screen two gruesome looking wrestlers appeared in an interview conducted in Spanish, with the voices of my students! The interview then dissolved into a scene in one bay's home. The students were discussing in Spanish a wrestling program they were watching on television. The program ended and they decided to go out around town. Then a series of situations in «real life» followed. During these scenes the students would use flashbacks (sometimes in slow motion) to a scene from the wrestling show they had been watching. (They had taken these scenes from the Spanish language station available in our area). A short excerpt followed, this time in native Spanish, with a return to the present to follow through on the flashback. The students followed this pattern through a number of situations, ending with another interview of the wrestlers dubbed over in Spanish by them. It was creative and totally original. What interests a teenager more than his peers and what they are
doing and what they think? During each viewing of this videotape, there was no
student who was off task. Students
Although a production of this complexity could not be required for every group of students, it incorporates many individual components that can be done by all. The tasks which this group completed were to: 1) write an original script in Spanish of their presentation 2) give a live presentation before their class in Spanish 3) create graphics on a computer in Spanish 4) dub over a live television show in Spanish 5) act out «real life» scenes in Spanish without a script 6) watch a television show in Spanish and edit it into their tape 7) edit, organize, and produce a coherent piece of work 8) learn new vocabulary and practice the formation of the imperative in Spanish. As indicated by the boys' videotape, the possibilities are endless for taping from English language shows and overdubbing in the target language. A thirty-second or a one minute commercial is an easy starting point. It requires script writing and pronunciation. Vocabulary must be looked up and learned and the audience must be considered. Verb forms must be taken into account. The correct degree of enthusiasm must be present. Music may be added. Short cartoons of several minutes require much of the same preparations. For more advanced students, a longer and more complicated show may be chosen. Skit performance in foreign language classes is not new or unique, but in front of a camcorder, the nature of the presentation changes. Students are given the customary general instructions; however, the skit may be recorded at home by the students them selves, or in the classroom. Taping the presentations can make for a more interesting visual presentation. Scenes can be changed, makeup or clothing changed, and computer graphics inserted for explanations (mean while, two hours later, etc.). If scripts are to be meaningful, a pause in the actual taping can help a nervous student remember his/her lines or receive a prompt. Students also like to create scenes in their skits with props (i.e., a Ken doll dressed in a green suit climbing a jumprope with green leaves to simulate Jack climbing the beans talk). Once the productions are completed and on tape, the teacher has another resource. The tape can be taken home to view again and evaluate more carefully for grading purposes. A tape may be shown to several sections of the same level so that other students can watch all of the presentations. Teachers can show tapes to other levels of students to enhance the learning process in a variety of ways. Videotapes model, entertain, teach, and inspire students. They can also be produced to promote and explain your foreign language program to others. Younger students contemplating language study like to see what a foreign language classroom is like. At Open Houses, parents can see what goes on in your classroom and even see their son or daughter «in action.» Classes can write, tape and produce their own tapes to send to outside contacts. Classes at our high school routinely contain students from various foreign countries who are in attendance for a time and then return to their native countries. A class-made video tape to take home is a wonderful memento. A videotape produced as a gift to the classroom to which foreign students are returning may result in very interesting responses, from a video in the target language by native speakers, to a quantity of thank you notes and letters which open possibilities for future contact. The camcorder can also be used during school-sponsored student trips to Europe. A video of a bullfight, flamenco dance, parade during Semana Santa, or an interview with a typical Spanish family in their home, provide personalized current cultural information. There are many other possibilities still to be discovered. I anticipate a time in the near future when the videocassette will routinely be the medium for student practice of skill areas in the foreign language secondary classroom. Try it; they like it! 
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