Videotexts have played a central role in FL teaching for almost three decades. No beginning or intermediate FL textbook today is published without videotexts, albeit typically of a simulated type, as part of its ancillary package. Due to “technological, pedagogical and sociological factors” (Kaiser, 2011, p. 232), it has taken time for authentic videotexts to make some inroads in the lower-level FL curriculum. Further, many FL instructors continue to have reservations regarding the appropriateness of authentic videotexts for lower-level learners with low language ability overall.

However, changes are rapidly taking place due in no small part due to increased access to a wide range of videotexts on the Internet and, more specifically, video-sharing web sites such as Daily Motion, Hulu, Vimeo, or YouTube. Not only is access to authentic videotexts increasingly easier, but the report of the MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages (2007) identified them as one important resource for challenging “students’ imaginations and [helping] them consider alternative ways of seeing, feeling, and understanding things” and teaching them “differences in meaning, mentality, and worldview as expressed in American English and in the target language” (p. 4) and urged FL teachers to make use of them and expand their use beyond that of preparing learners for subsequent oral tasks or supporting the learning of lexicon-grammatical forms.

As indicated in other modules, interaction and interpretation of authentic texts, including videotexts, should not be reserved for advanced FL learners only. Beginning FL learners can also engage in designing the meaning of authentic texts and the multiliteracies framework examined throughout these modules provides the tools to design video-mediated listening activities that are accessible to them.

Videotext

You might wonder why we chose the word videotext rather than video for this module. Reading or hearing the word videotext directs our attention to the “textual” elements and literacy practices of the medium and not the technology of the medium, namely its ability to dynamically combine visual and audio elements in a connected sequence. It is Elizabeth Joiner who, in 1990, first coined the term videotext as she argued that video is “as deserving of the label text as is a written document” (p. 54). We should engage with a videotext in much the same way we engage with a written text, namely we should pay attention to its cohesive devices, style nuances, composition and narrative structure, and underlying viewpoints. Gruba argues that looking at a videotext as text allows us to ask questions about “authorship, intended audience, the presentation of worldview or the influence of specific textual features,” (2005, p. 9). Thinking about a videotext in these terms certainly makes a lot of sense within the context of multiliteracies orientation to FL teaching and learning.

What do we mean by video-mediated listening? In the context of this module we elect to use Rubin’s (1995) definition of video-mediated listening as an “active process in which listeners select and interpret information which comes from auditory and visual cues in order to define what is going on” (p. 7). Underscored by this definition is the constructive nature of video-mediated listening, more specifically the interaction between the listener–viewer’s knowledge and the videotext. Video-mediated listening is a recursive and interactive act of meaning construction, during which the listener–viewer links what he or she hears/views (visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and linguistic features of a videotext) to his or her background knowledge to construct meaning and makes inferences to understand particular viewpoints and perspectives. Rubin’s definition aligns particularly well with the multiliteracies view of video-mediated listening as an act of meaning design during which listener–viewers draw from Available Designs to construct meaning from videotexts.

Video-mediated listening

Video-mediated listening amounts to much more than the ability to decode audio elements and use strategies to construct meaning from a videotext; it is also a socially situated practice that calls on learners to bring context and text together. As listener–viewers interact with the context and text of a videotext to make meaning, the three dimensions of the multiliteracies framework interact.

Helping FL learners interpret the textual representation of the lived context of culture presented on the screen is an important goal of video-mediated listening within the multiliteracies framework. FL teaching and learning is not only about teaching and learning what people say and how to say it correctly and appropriately, but also about teaching and learning why people say one thing rather than another to whom, and for which purpose, and how they express it in the lived context of culture. It is about going “beyond the here-and-now of the interaction to reflect on the “broader attitudes, values, and beliefs” of the target community and culture (Kramsch & Andersen, 1999, p. 40), which is a common focus of video-mediated listening in advanced-level FL courses. As such a multiliteracies-oriented approach to videotexts not only contributes to bridging the curricular gap found in many four-year FL curricula; it also contributes to the goal of developing learners’ linguistic, cultural, and interpretive abilities, as well as their media and visual literacies as they engage with various forms of multimodal discourse

References:
– Gruba, P. (2005). Developing media literacy in the L2 classroom. Sydney, Australia:Macquarie University, National Centre for English Teaching and Research.

– Joiner, E. G. (1990). Choosing and using videotexts. Foreign Language Annals, 23, 53–64.

– Kaiser, M. (2011). New approaches to exploiting film in the foreign language classroom. L2 Journal, 3, 232–249.

– Kramsch, C., & Andersen, R. (1999). Teaching text and context through multimedia. Language Learning & Technology, 2, 31–42.

– MLA Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages. (2007). Foreign languages and higher education: New structures for a changed world. Profession, 234–245.

– Rubin, J. (1995). An overview to A guide for the teaching of second language liste