Authentic Interactive Video for Lower-Level Spanish at the United States Naval Academy

Abstract

By the fortunate coincidence of necessity and opportunity, the Language Studies Department at the U.S. Naval Academy became involved in interactive video (IAV).2 In 1984 our alumni association funded a satellite earthstation providing broadcast video in a variety of languages. Soon we discovered that most of the programming received was beyond the linguistic reach of all but our most advanced students. Just as we began to despair about exploiting our new dish antenna fully, the Academy began funding projects to incorporate computer-assisted instruction into the curriculum. Adding computer-controlled interactivity to the video which we receive has proved an ideal means of making foreign-language materials accessible to our students from their very first week of instruction. Most laymen envision only in its flashiest form: simulations with various possible outcomes depending on the choices made by users. For various practical and theoretical reasons, however, my colleagues and I chose to avoid this participant mode and opted for an observer mode. Although both approaches clearly deserve a place in language learning, for our purposes the observer mode offers significant long-term advantages over its sexier sibling. Foremost, from the authors' standpoint, is increased lesson production: because situations with a linear design require far less extensive planning than simulations with multiple outcomes, many more promising projects can emerge from the development stage. In addition, learners appreciate the clearly defined, concrete learning objectives and the predictability of presentation and tasks which the observer mode makes possible. At the Naval Academy, foreign-language enrollment is concentrated in firstand secondyear classes, which meet three times a week for 50 minutes.3 Our overall pedagogical approach has benefited from recent research showing that the most effective instructional strategies first emphasize the receptive skills -listening, readingbefore building the productive skillsspeaking, writing.4 We have a strong bias toward building proficiency (i.e., the ability to apply linguistic knowledge and communicative strategies in order to understand and produce coherent spoken or written discourse in the foreign language) over achievement (i.e., mastery of a specific inventory of words and structures). Our lessons are designed to build listening comprehension skills with video, that is, with television programs produced by and intended for native speakers of the language. Our term authentic IAV stands for computer-assisted instruction based on such broadcast materials. Ultimately we intend to incorporate interactive video into all our language courses; but, in support of a long-term study of the effectiveness of described below, we initially concentrated on lower-level Spanish, for which we have implemented 44 weekly lessons.5 From the first satellite earth station donated by our alumni, we have expanded to two dish antennas and even have plans for a third one. Our original 6-meter dish permits us to receive regular network television broadcasts from Canada, Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Soviet-bloc countries, as well as certain broadcasts from France and Spain. Since 1989, a new 12-meter dish has improved our reception from the Americas and has also provided access to European satellites as far east as 8? west longitude.6 In the future we intend to dedicate a small dish antenna to receiving SCOLA broadcasts.