| The teaching of foreign languages by television began in 1951, as early as the first experiments of instructional television itself. Even earlier than these experiments, the role of the visual dimension for the teaching of foreign languages began to be investigated and experimented with for the learning of dialogues, vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, and for use in the language lab. In these experiments, various modes of presentation, namely the presentation of auditory stimuli, orthographic stimuli, and pictorial stimuli, have been used alone and in a variety of combinations. A survey of the findings of various of these experiments and an overview of the use and effectiveness of television for foreign language teaching during the past thirty years serve as an introduction to this present study.; The two 20-minute video lessons prepared for this study portray everyday activities of six 'foreign' students studying EFL at a university in the United States. Lesson I, "Introductions," presenting the dialogue with actors in the studio and drills by the teacher in the studio is an example of 'televised instruction'. Lesson II, "Campus Activities," presenting the characters--Mr. Gomez from Colombia, Mrs. Ashour from Iran, Miss Ho from Japan, Ralph Kayembe from Niger, Marie Bloc from France, and Jose Garcia from Mexico--through slides, with superimposed titles and sentences for repetition and an on-location film of the dialogue in the bookstore exploits the techniques of television and is an example of 'instructional television'. The two English lessons were taught to two groups of adult native speakers of Spanish enrolled in beginning English as a Foreign Language classes. Each group received a different mode of presentation. The control group received simultaneous auditory and orthographic presentation. The experimental group received simultaneous auditory, orthographic, and pictorial presentation. Subjects receiving the simultaneous auditory-orthographic presentation listened to the lesson while reading the audio script. Subjects receiving the simultaneous auditory-orthographic-pictorial presentation listened to the lesson while viewing the orthographic and pictorial stimuli presented on the individual television monitors in the Georgetown University Library Audio-Visual Department. Immediately following each of the two lessons, subjects were administered a post-test to measure the accuracy of specific vocabulary terms and one item each of grammar and pronunciation. Results showed that students receiving the 'video' (simultaneous auditory-orthographic-pictorial) presentation scored significantly better on the pronunciation part of the post-test for Lesson II. Results which showed better scores for certain students receiving 'audio' (simultaneous auditory-orthographic) presentation for pronunciation for Lesson I and for grammar for Lessons I and II were only mildly significantly better and suggest the presence of other variables at work. The two 20-minute videocassettes, #E-29 and #E-30, which were made for the video presentation are found in the Georgetown University Library Audio-Visual Department. |
