Rex C. Dahl
Paul F. Luckau
Abstract:
The integration of culture into the language learning experience has always been tenuous either because teachers feel inadequate in their knowledge of the foreign culture or because they have not been adequately trained for the teaching of that culture.
This paper characterizes an interactive video project, VIDEODEUTSCH, which facilitates the controlled access of video material and the presentation of other language and cultural materials in a pre-programmed manner. This text can be used by the learner in the laboratory or it can be teacher-controlled in the classroom. The organization of the program allows the student to participate with verbal and nonverbal linguistic and cultural phenomena in a realistic way which begins to approach actual experience in the culture.
This paper describes VIDEODEUTSCH in terms of its hardware, its authoring system, the types of visual reference materials used, the organization of the phases which make up each of its units, what it teaches, and gives a sample of its computer programs.
VIDEODEUTSCH is a program designed to facilitate the teaching of culture in an integrated manner with language.
Dr. Dahl and Mr. Luckau created the computer-controlled language and culture program, VIDEODEUTSCH while Dr. Dahl was on sabbatical at BYU in 1983-84.
KEYWORDS: computer-controlled videotape, videocassette, interactive video, culture, cultural literacy, teaching culture, mastery, teacher-directed study, self-study, VIDEODEUTSCH.
Culture is a basic and necessary part of language teaching and learning as characterized by the following:
To interact is to be alive; to fail to do so is to be dead To study language without studying the culture of the native speakers of language is a lifeless endeavor.
Obviously, language teachers and textbook authors have had difficulty subscribing to the foregoing maxims. As often as not, only a single class period—less than an hour—is devoted to cultural involvement in a language teaching week, and this extra activity is superimposed on, rather than integrated into, the language learning process. This self-contained, detached day of the week often connotes as a holiday for teacher and student alike: Friday is culture day!
Why does culture remain peripheral in the foreign language classroom even when teachers recognize its importance in relation to language? Two explanations may account for this second-class status. First, teachers feel inadequate in their knowledge
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of the foreign culture. They sense a pressure to dispense culturally accurate information, but they have only limited and time-bound experiences in the foreign culture. Second, teachers may not have been adequately trained in the teaching of culture. They are familiar with a variety of culture teaching strategies, such as culture capsules, culture clusters, culture assimilators, and cultural minidramas, but they do not know how to integrate the strategies into a systematic study of culture, nor how to integrate culture study with language learning.
The present transition from an industry-oriented society to an information-oriented society helps to provide solutions to the language/culture dilemma. The high technology revolution is now beginning to create programs in which systematic approaches to an integrated language/culture program are incorporated. With each new machine to be used in the classroom, the fear again arises that the computer will replace the teacher, or protests emerge that the computer can never provide the student the personal, human touch that only a human being has the capabilities to generate. To the concern and the protestation we offer the rejoinder that if technology ever replaces the teacher, the teacher, alas, never had the personal, human touch. If the teacher doesn't have the qualities beyond the mechanics of high technology, she/he ought to be replaced, not by a computer, but by a real teacher.
Lest we miss the point here, we must make a firm statement that in this age of informational technology, a computer must be given the opportunity to perform functions that it can do as well as a teacher and perhaps more consistently. The teacher must assume a more dynamic role in using the time available in the classroom which was previously allotted to mechanical presentations that a computer can do as well and perhaps better. The teacher can then concentrate on dynamic class activities which give the learner direct experience in communication involving language and culture in a vibrant, enlivened, morphological context. What, for example, would the advantages be to the learner, if grammar were taken from the classroom and consigned to a learning center? How much more time would then be available for the teacher and the learner to actively use the language and to allow for vital communicative interaction?
We believe that VIDEODEUTSCH represents a major step in the right direction. Not only does it make it possible to move some of the mechanical aspects of language learning from the classroom to the laboratory, or even to the home, but it also employs visual cultural materials for interactive learning in the laboratory and the home.
VIDEODEUTSCH can also be teacher-controlled in the classroom and treated as a means to language/cultural literacy to an extent no textbook has ever been able to reach. The visual reference material coupled with the random access capabilities of the computer allows the student to experience verbal and nonverbal linguistic and cultural phenomena in such a realistic way that the experience can be bettered only by the learner being in the target environment. Even firsthand experience in the foreign culture isn't usually or necessarily a solution to the problem of acquiring cultural literacy. A teacher or a guide who has cultural expertise can help immensely. However, in lieu of this possibility, a program such as VIDEODEUTSCH, which we now describe, is the learner's best resource.
THE HARDWARE
It is the hardware that enables and facilitates the controlled random access of video material and the presentation of other language and cultural materials in a pre-programmed systematic manner. As such, the hardware is absolutely indispensable for the presentation of the material so as to get maximum benefit in or out of the classroom.
For accurate presentation of selected visual reference material, the teacher-programmer must have a way to begin a video segment at precisely the moment desired and end the material with the same accuracy. At first we thought that this precision would be impossible to achieve using a VCR. The literature suggested that due to repeated playings and the expansion of videotape, that only relative, short-lived accuracy could be attained. Our experimentation over several months has shown this to be fallacious. At the core of our relatively small inventory of hardware, is an interactive device which links the microcomputer and the color video recorder. This interface is known as the BCS 450 and is available from BCD Associates in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The commands moving from the computer to the recorder cause the VCR to begin to show a segment of tape at a specific, selected point and play until a further command compels it to stop where desired. This is possible because the videotape itself is encoded with address locations. BCD supplies a program with the interface known as Logger I. It comes complete with instructions and enables the encoding of the videotape on the second sound track of the tape. The first sound track is reserved for the audio which accompanies the visual aspects of the tape.
Because of the necessity of a VCR recorder which requires two sound tracks, only industrial models are useful in projects of this type. We used a Panasonic NV 8200 VHS videocassette recorder which employs the American NTSC system. If tapes are acquired from outside the U.S. for such use, they must be played on the same system on which they were originally recorded (PAL, SECAM, Japanese NTSC) or transcoded for use on a domestic machine. Because of the availability of foreign tapes, other recorders might be desirable to consider for those times when such tapes are required for a specific program.
The BCD interface card is connected from the computer directly to the VCR. This enables the commands to move to the VCR when stimulated to do so by the computer program.
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0x01 graphic
We could have used an Apple II Plus or an Apple IIe for our central nerve system. However, the Apple IIe has some features that make life with foreign language characters much easier. Because we had access to the Apple IIe, we were able to deal with special language characters—letters such as umlauts and the sharp s—without difficulty. But the chief decision to work with the Apple computer was made because the BCD interface was designed for compatibility with Apple products from early on. Just recently other hardware configurations have become possible because of the emergence of other BCD products.
In our experimentation we decided that we needed to have the use of two video monitors. The first was a small, green-screened monitor which is usually supplied with the computer. The second was a large color video monitor. We used the Panasonic Tristandard, model CT 2000 M, because of its compatibility with the VCR. It has the direct 16 pin connector cable which carries both picture and sound from the recorder to monitor. Both screens show the computer programs until a command is sent to the VCR to play. At this time the computer messages to the large color monitor are pre-empted in favor of the video portrayal. As soon as the video segment ends, the large monitor returns to computer control. This arrangement allows the programmer some interesting capabilities. For example, a segment of videologue (video dialoque) can be shown and heard on the large monitor while the text is yet visible on the smaller screen. In this way, the learner can either see the pictorial representation directly or listen to the audio portions of the video while reading the dialogue on the other screen.
To complete the hardware inventory, the teacher-programmer needs two disc drives and access to a printer so that the programs can be seen on hard copy for eventual corrections. However, the learner using a program created in the style of VIDEODEUTSCH needs only one disc drive. The second drive is necessary only in the creation of the computer programs.
PROGRAMMING
It is possible that if the teacher is in possession of fundamental programming capabilities, she/he will not need the assistance of an authoring package. This simplifies the task at hand considerably. For our part, we used Apple's Super Pilot authoring system. It is based on the Pascal language, but one need not know Pascal to manage it comfortably, if not relatively easily. A recommendation worthy of mention here is that the teacher-programmer should always maintain contact with an expert programmer. We practiced this admonition, and it saved us enormous amounts of time. We probably could have accomplished almost anything we did in the project on our own, but we soon learned that valid shortcuts were available which paid off not only because of the conservation of valuable time, but because computer memory space could often be preserved by those more knowledgeable in programming.
With Super Pilot we not only had an interactive connection with the video recorder, but we were also able to work the language and culture away from the visual reference material in many excellent ways thus benefiting the student even more.
THE PROGRAM VIDEODEUTSCH
The video reference material involved in this project is of two types. First, because of its availability to our project, we have an inventory of Deutschlandspiegel films which have been dubbed over from 16mm film to videotape. We did this with permission of the appropriate German agencies. The disadvantage of this type of narrative-oriented video material is that the learner has little or no opportunity to see the actual physiognomy of the narrator, and much nonverbal culture which might be expressed by the narrator and otherwise discussed is lost. This leaves only a small amount of nonverbal culture which is expressed by others in the films. As a result, we created our own dramatic scripts which are of graduated difficulty levels. We call these videologues because they have dialogue content and also much visual, nonverbal information which is pointed out and explained by the program. Al the characters who acted for us in these homemade episodes are either native or have native capabilities.
Our first videologue, for example, has a setting in the United States. Paul Jackson, an American, has just arrived home from Germany where his freelance photography has taken him to collect materials for a movie on German culture. He knows how to shoot the scenes, but he isn't sure just how to best focus on the cultural content in some of his material. So, he invites Hannelore Ebbighausen, an acquaintance of his from Munich, to come over to help him with his work. The episode begins as she arrives. We entitle the videologue, Ein Besuch (A Visit), because we want to concentrate on meaningful cultural phenomena arising during greetings and visits. But our efforts don't stop there. We go on to concentrate on the nonverbal cultural behavior demonstrated by our characters in our videologues. We also used the Deutschlandspeigel films to teach nonverbal cultural behavior when appropriate.
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The central visual feature of the first part of a unit is the homemade dramatic video. The narrative Deutschlandspeigel occupies a prominent position in the second part. By and large the mechanics of the first and the second parts are the same, so we will give a representation of just the first half of a unit here.
The half unit is divided into several segments. In each of these we concentrate on some different aspect of the language, the culture, or a combination of both, including the nonverbal. Along the way we insert programming commands which are designed to help maintain the interest of the learner. Some of these include positive reinforcement by means of little audio melodies when the correct action is taken or the right answer is given; sometimes a restraining reinforcement is given by a noise or a negative sound when something needs to be repeated or wasn't correct. In some of the segments we keep score, and the learner must achieve a certain rate in order to go on. We have tried to maintain as a main feature of the project the concept of mastery. One is not allowed to advance until a certain literacy level has been achieved. This is accomplished by looping statements in the program.
We associate each half unit of the VIDEODEUTSCH program with specific grammar and syntax which must be studied and internalized before the computer-controlled videotape containing the VIDEODEUTSCH unit is encountered. These specified background skills can be developed from any of a number of good texts or from some computerized grammar programs.
Upon beginning the VIDEODEUTSCH program the learner is shown some graphics introducing the program and then moves into phase I where instructions are given for the work at hand. The learner will have to interact with the videologue in a number of ways. First, the learner will see the episode on the large screen from beginning to end, then the text of the videologue appears before the learner on the computer screen as well as the color monitor. Next the episode plays again. The student concentrates not only on the visual, but she/he attempts to associate the sounds of the videologue with the text directly in front of her/him. Finally small segments of the videologue are shown—as single utterances—and the learner sees these individually on the computer screen. After hearing the original, the learner repeats the utterances in an attempt to replicate the sounds just heard. Then the entire episode is presented again, this time uninterrupted.
In phase II we begin to stimulate the building of vocabulary which is a part of the videologue. The learner is first shown an English word or phrase, then the German equivalent. The task of the learner is to see each new English word or phrase, associate it with the accompanying German equivalent, and then type the German equivalent. If the learner makes a mistake, the opportunity arises immediately for her/him to correct the problem. All vocabulary items are practiced in this manner. Along the way, significant grammatical reminders are infused into the program as a support and guide to the learner.
0x01 graphic
As the student enters phase III, the tables are turned. The learner must now, based on a random representation of the vocabulary seen in German, give an English equivalent. Here a score is kept, and the learner must achieve a mastery level to go on.
In phase IV vocabulary training is continued. The learner is advised that the activity gets a little more challenging here. Now the learner must supply the correct German equivalent of an English word or expression. This might require correct conjugation of verbs or the provision of correct noun forms as well as the representation of idiomatic expressions in German. At the end of the phase, we have provided a nice feature for the review of those items that remain incorrect after the mastery level is achieved.
In phase V we are still dealing with vocabulary but now in a sort of game. The learner is given a clue in German or English which elicits a vocabulary item in a specific form, i.e. plural, conjugated in a certain way, etc. The clue stimulates the form required. For example, when the program displays Opposite of 'not much,' the learner types viel for a correct response. Any time more than one form of a word or phrase is possible, the computer program takes this into consideration. In its memory are matches for all correct
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alternatives. The learner is aware that the parameters of the vocabulary exercise are limited to those items in the videologue.
The final vocabulary segment of the first half unit is phase VI. It is sort of a cloze quiz. The instructions to the learner are as follows:
Here is your final vocabulary section. This will help you make correct word selections in a context. You will be provided with a paragraph with blanks in place of some words. When a blank turns white, type the word you think should go there and press RETURN. If you used the wrong word, it will turn red. You must fill in 13 or more of the blanks with the correct vocabulary items. If you don't get 13 or more correct the first time, you will be allowed to try again on the ones you missed.
The context is the language of the videologue, so the student is working with familiar material.
A word now about classroom work. After the vocabulary and the videologue have been practiced outside class in the way described here, requiring mastery, the learner, prompted by the teacher and/or the videologue or both, should be capable of meaningful communicative work in the classroom.
0x01 graphic Phase VII probes into the understanding of the Berbal content of the videologue. The learner is presented with a set of content queries in the form of multiple choice and true/false statements. Again we have a game atmosphere since score is kept. Scoring is the same as before and relates to the mastery level. In the videologue, Hannelore arrives at Paul's at exactly eight o'clock. A true/false statement from this phase is: Es ist genau acht Uhr, und Lore ist punktlich. The statement is obviously true, and if the learner presses the t on the keyboard, she/he will be given appropriate credit. The statements are presented in a random fashion, and if the student is not successful with some of the statements, she/he will have the opportunity to see them again until mastery is achieved. The correctly treated statements do not reappear.
The last part of the first half of the unit is divided into phases VIII and IX. This is done because of programming necessities and the use of memory as dictated by Super Pilot. The information is simply too long to put into one phase. For our purposes here, we will treat the two phases as one cohesive segment. In terms of language training and culture, this segment has significance far beyond any other approach that we know of. We call this segment The Fifth Dimension. Although textbooks and teachers have been bound to the four skills approach to language learning, this project goes beyond the concepts of listening, reading, speaking and writing. In the broad confines of this project, we provide for practice in these four traditional areas, but this program brings culture to the foreground in significantly different ways. It does so not only on a systematic bases, which is so often lacking in the classroom, but it treats nonverbal culture and enhances the chances for nonverbal cultural literacy in our learners. Thus our designation: The Fifth Dimension.
In the videologue under discussion, we delve into physical behavior, greetings, stereotyping, the physical appearance of the characters, dress, the handshake, forms of address and other verbal and nonverbal cultural signs. The learner is sometimes guided by questions which lead to conclusions and understanding about the culture. One portion of The Fifth Dimension begins like this: This segment presents a nonverbal aspect of culture which is very common in Germany. This form of communication relates to a concept called 'kinesics' which has to do with how we use our bodies to interact with each other.
At this point we give a hint. We ask the learner to look at a specific, limited segment of the videologue and concentrate on kinesic behavior. After the scene has unfolded, we offer a multiple choice option which serves to help the learner isolate the behavior. To get at the desired goal, we say the following:
The significant action in this section of videologue is:
a - Paul's way of looking at Lore.
b - Lore's way of looking at Paul.
c - Their handshake.
d - How Paul looks at his watch.
The video segment would only allow the learner to think of the handshake. If, however, the learner doesn't choose the right concept, she/he is able to watch the scene again. If the learner has difficulty (which shouldn't be the case), we simply continue by pointing out that we are going to concentrate on the handshake. Then we ask why the handshake is significant. Again we provide a multiple choice orientation:
a - When Germans meet, they just have to touch each other.
b - They shake hands to define their space. They need to adjust the distance between them for a comfortable position.
c - This is an acceptable and common greeting in German.
d - None of the above.
If d is given for the answer, we indicate that the student has blown the situation and must try again. All of the other answers are correct, and we finally tell them that. One correct answer will bring them to that reality.
Along the way we try to ask questions which transmute the comprehension of culture from that of the physical sign(s) to that of the underlying necessity(ies) which gives rise to the physical
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sign(s). As a result, a question like this is offered:
What is the underlying necessity that prompts a handshake, rubbing noses or any form of touching? We then give explanations
It appears that in every society there is a need to touch, but at times is absolutely taboo to do so. However, despite the fact that a need to touch is common to all cultures, physical contact can convey very different meanings. Haptics is a term used to describe communication by touching.
The explanation continues:
Back to Lore's and Paul's handshake. Although matters have changed a lot in recent years, Germans still shake hands a lot more than Americans. In addition to shaking hands when being introduced, many Germans consider a handshake part of the everyday greeting. Germans shake hands on the street, in stores and in other public places. And don't be surprised if someone extends an elbow or a little finger to touch if arms are full or hands are dirty and wet. To be proper you should shake a woman's hand before a man's or a child's; an older person's hand before a younger person's. You should take care to shake hands with everyone in the group. If there are more than two people shaking hands, they should take turns, as four people forming a cross by shaking hands at the same time is superstitiously avoided.6 You'll learn more about haptics (touching remember?) later.
While the learner is guided methodically through the final explanation, the project design takes into account that the learner must be tested along the way to probe into her/his cultural literacy bank. For this reason, tests are given after every two units. These tests originate by showing a video segment never seen before by the learner. However, the segments contain verbal and nonverbal culture analogous to those types presented in earlier phases. Probing questions determine whether the learner has indeed garnered the concepts and understood culture as it has been treated. If it is found that any learner is delinquent, that individual is returned to previous work for a review.
As The Fifth Dimension ends, so ends the first half of the unit. Except for the substitution of the narrative Deutschlandspiegel episodes for the dramatic homemade video material, the programming approach to the second half of each unit is the same, including The Fifth Dimension.
A Sample of the Programming
In order to give a sense of the programming of this project, we offer the following. This particular example comes from The Fifth Dimension. Its focus is naturally different than the vocabulary building segments or those devoted to understanding the verbal content, but it does illustrate how video segments are brought up. In this case the video command is used in conjunction with cultural explanations. Those commands beginning with v activate and deactivate the videotape. A full explanation of all the commands is given with the literature accompanying the Super Pilot authoring system and the BCD Logger I program.
The program sample:
ts:v;es;g6,0;t2
t:Cultural Concept 2
g:c5;o0,486;d560,0
ts:t1;v0,39,2,23
t:
t:Stereotyping: viewing people or
t:cultures according to popular
t:(usually incorrect) conceptions,
t:thereby ignoring individuality.
t:
t:Stereotyping can be dangerous. We
:want to break down some of your
:misconceptions about Germans.
t:
t:
t:Hint: Pay particular attention to
:Lore's physical appearance in this
:segment of the videologue...
v:find800
c:
u:pause
v:plyv1000
ts:es;g0,6
t: True or false?
t:
t: The physical appearance of
:people within a society characterizes
:the society as a whole.
u:tfin
m:t
sn:6,60;4,60;2,90
sy:46,8;48,8;46,8;48,8;46,8;48,8;46,8
ts:es
thn:Nein!
thy:Correct!
*2.1
t:People's appearance is
:very important in assessing their culture.
t:Many times, however, we make the mistake of overlooking the details by substituting stereotypes.
t:These are common misconceptions about Germans:
t: Germans are militaristic.
t:Germans are blonde and fat.
t: Germans are formal and domineering.
The *intro is placed at the end of the program segment so that memory locations at the beginning are made available to those portions of the program which must repeatedly be sought out on a random basis. The nature of Super Pilot is to go to the beginning of a program to make a search. Placing the *intro at the end saves valuable time which would otherwise be lost would each search have to find its way through the *intro because it was at the beginning.
Editor's Note: The text of the program sample has been greatly shortened by the Editor due to space requirements.
CONCLUSION
For years we have been concerned with the problem of teaching culture and language simultaneously. It is very obvious that teaching language essentially
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by itself has been the major emphasis of textbook writers and language teachers. The addition of film and video provide an extra dimension and opportunity for learning especially in the area of culture and are the next best experience to actually being in the country. The best experience, of course, would seem to be that of participating in programs such as study abroad or live-in opportunities. However, the visual media, coupled with the microcomputer's interactive capabilities, set up language/culture learning circumstances that are quite exciting and go beyond what is commonly available today. The text of VIDEODEUTSCH as described here communicates to the student and involves the learner in the native invironment to an extent few, if any pedagogical projects ever before conceived. The whole area of nonverbal culture can now be added to verbal culture and language learning and can be presented in the laboratory or the classroom for the greater edification of the learner.
We conclude with a summary of some of the important thoughts:
1. Interactive video, especially with a VCR, is a natural to facilitate acquisition of culture and language.
2. The interactive nature of this project has application in the laboratory where mastery learning takes place. This provides valuable time in the classroom where the teacher facilitates dynamic communication based on the laboratory experience. Furthermore, the hardware and visual reference material can be introduced into the classroom, but only after the mastery learning has been accomplished. Then and there the teacher can use the program to enhance the communicative process.
3. The visual reference material is cultural reality. It comes from authentic sources. This is not a picture in a book, but involvement and experience.
4. Almost all videotapes can be adapted for use at all levels of the academic structure. Universities and public schools can afford this sort of approach to interactive video, whereas interactive videodisc is presently prohibitive in price for such institutions.
5. There are numerous sources for the procurement of inexpensive video materials. From Germany, for example, the following offices have materials available for loan, reasonable purchase, and often, as gifts: The German Information Office, The Goethe Institutes, the information centers of the major cities in Germany, the embassy and the consulates of the Federal Republic, and more. Don't forget your own creativity. Produce your own flicks.
E.T. Hall, The Silent Language (Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/Double Day, 1973), p. 39.
Linda Crawford-Lange and Dale L. Lange, "Doing the Unthinkable in the Foreign Language Classroom: A Process for the Integration of Language and Culture," Teaching for Proficiency. The Organizing Principle, ed. Theodore V. Higgs (Lincoln-wood, Illinois: National Textbook Co, 1984) p. 140.
Ibid, p. 141.
For one such approach, see: Rex C. Dahl, "High Technology, Language Learning and Nonverbal Cultural Literacy," De Unterrichtspraxis, Spring 1984, pp. 66-75.
Ibid.
6 We found that there are two good publications which provide information that synchronize amazingly well with our systematized approach to nonverbal culture. Some of our explanations are conditioned by the language used in these books. For example, a segment on "Shaking Hands" appears in Culture for Missionaries, (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Publications, 1980) 2nd edition, p. 40. The second work we find very useful is: These strange German Ways, ed. Irmgard Burmeister (Hamburg, Germany: Atlantik-Brücke, 1979) 13 edition.
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