Abstract

ESL students in academic listening/speaking courses often listen to long audio recordings similar to a lecture or other academic passages. When listening to these passages, students can lose their interest which impedes their learning of new strategies for understanding academic language. Students in the Level Four Listening/Speaking classes at Brigham Young University's English Language Center (ELC), under the previous curriculum, would experience this challenge. All of the passages were available only in audio and were long in duration. The students would lose interest and improve little in their listening skills. Under the new curriculum at the ELC, students in Academic Levels A and B practice listening using both audio and video. When only audio recordings are used, the students are observed to lose interest and they do not practice the strategies. In order to build student interest, broadcast news video clips can be used. These clips offer a multi-sensory experience for the students and they can vary in length. Also, these clips expose the students to language and content that they will experience in university settings, thus providing them with an authentic experience. In order to create cohesive and coherent materials using video clips, specifications for these materials needed to be designed and developed. The designed specifications discuss ten steps for developers to follow in order to create these materials. As a part of these specifications, two sample sections were created. Because of the context, the specifications focus on the use of broadcast news clips; however, they can easily be adapted for use in other contexts as well. The developed sample sections were piloted in order to assess the usefulness of the specifications. Feedback was received from my Project Chair, the listening/speaking coordinator, the students who participated in the pilot, and the other teacher who participated in the pilot. Using the feedback revisions were made to the specifications and the sample sections.

Degree

MA

College and Department

Humanities; Linguistics and English Language

Rights

http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2010-08-09

Document Type

Selected Project

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd3916

Keywords

specifications, video, listening/speaking, materials development

Language

English

Included in

Linguistics Commons

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