BACKGROUND:

Working under the auspices of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS), the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Media Center began creating original content for the Language Program in the spring of 2009. This index of videos will continue to grow alongside the development of the Language Program.

VIDEO INDEX ORGANIZATION:

Our video index is defined by the inclusion of three main components: (1) the original videos (with audio and music, or with musical score only), (2) the same videos, but with additional audio tracks recorded by native speakers and near-native speakers who describe with words, narrate using longer pieces discourse, and critique and comment on the content/style of the original videos, and (3) written transcripts of the various audio tracks.

PEDAGOGICAL IMPLEMENTATION:

The use of these videos and lesson plans is intended to support the implementation of a guided inductive approach towards second language learning and second language instruction. For that purpose, the audio tracks and written transcripts provide instructors with a language database that can be used to focus students’ attention on the guided analysis of the target language (data-driven) with additional visual contextual support provided by the original videos.

CURRENT STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT:

Currently, some videos have specific lesson plans associated with them that instructors can use as blueprints to integrate them to classroom instruction. Eventually, each video or groups of videos will provide instructors with a series of parallel, complementary lesson plans supporting different implementation procedures and/or different pedagogical techniques (e.g., comparison of student audio tracks with native audio tracks, reconstruction of native audio tracks through guided dictation, use of word-based audio track to create a narrative track).

PEDAGOGICAL TRAINING:

The implementation of some of the lesson plans provided as blueprints has been recorded, analyzed and edited for the purpose of providing training on the use of videos for pedagogical purposes. This is a typically neglected area of training of second language teaching that can be directly addressed through the evaluation of the actual implementation of some of the suggested lesson plans.

About the Index Videos

The library of videos on this site are designed for use in the classroom. Each video is accompanied by a transcript and a template lesson plan. The transcripts for the TEMPLATE videos are intentionally blank, which students can use to transcribe their own voice overs.

All lesson plans are in .doc (MS Word) format and all transcripts are in .pdf (Adobe Reader) format.

_______________________________ This key icon reveals a legend for the type of language data in the video. All language data is unscripted, whether it is an interview (entrevista) or one of six types of voice over.