Journal of National Taiwan Normal University: Humanity and Social Science 1998, 43(2), 21-35
Integrating Authentic Video into Junior College English:
An Empirical Study for Situation Comedy
n e tn
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n hu c ., iy
Tak-Ming Junior College of Commerce
Abstract
The study was to focus on the incorporation of television situation comedies into the general En-glish course of junior college. After one-semester learning in the video-integrated curriculum,. the stu-dents confirmed its positive effects on their English acquisition in the evaluation. Instructíonal method-ology and implications were also included for discussion about the integrated course design.
Key words: English language teaching‘junior college. curriculum design. sitcom. video
English language teaching (EL T) has been considerably changed by the introduction of mod-ern technology in the past two decades. Literature on the ELT use of video prepares the ground of the notional and principal guìdance for teachers.
The study was an attempt to provide empirical evi-dence for the effect of integrating authentic video materials into the one-semester general English curriculum in a five-year junior college of com-merce.
Video Applications in EFL Classroom
According to the newly revised curriculum standard by the Department of Education, English courses have been diminished from originally more credits to 20 out of 220 degree-required credits for five-year junior colleges since 1995. Most schools offer English courses at 3-hour bases on weekly schedule in the students' first three years of study. Some departments may arrange extra one- or two-hour language lab courses proceeding one school year or two. However, many junior college teachers have expressed their' concern of the inadequate time allocated for English class which may impose more constraint on the students' language input and output opportunities. And, due to the curricu-lum change, the teachers are encountering new pedagogical challenges in their c1ass. Questions centering the study in the context are: How can we teach more effectively for students to acquire four language skills within the limited time? What
au-thentic resources are available for communication-oriented English class? How can we integrate the authentic materials into the general teaching schedule? In the study, authentic video materials were applied to the English curriculum in the hope of answering part of the questions. First, the at-tributes and potentials of video are examined as follows.
V
i.
deo dîstinguishes itself from other tradition-al types öf teaching materitradition-als such as printed texts and, audio tapes. With the strength of theconsecu-tive moving images on the screen" video presents the conversational process as a whole without miss-ing the simultaneous picture and sound. The visual element in discourse thus is able to be observed by the learners in the classroom of a foreign country. Visual element provides information on setting,
context, or background knowledge in which the dia-logue as well as the physical interaction between