Rubena St. Louis's List: Materials development

When reading or listening in our L1 we do not understand the meaning of an utterance or a text just by understanding the meaning of its words. In fact we do not understand the text at all but rather our mental representation of it. For this representation to become meaningful and memorable we need to make use of all the resources of our mind.

This study investigated the effects of captioning during video-based listening activities. Second- and fourth-year learners of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian watched three short videos with and without captioning in randomized order. Spanish learners had two additional groups: one watched the videos twice with no captioning, and another watched them twice with captioning. After the second showing of the video, learners took comprehension and vocabulary tests based on the video. Twenty-six learners participated in interviews following the actual experiment. They were asked about their general reactions to the videos (captioned and noncaptioned). Results from t-tests and two-way ANOVAs indicated that captioning was more effective than no captioning. Captioning during the first showing of the videos was more effective for performance on aural vocabulary tests. For Spanish and Russian, captioning first was generally more effective than captioning second; while for Arabic and Chinese, there was a trend toward captioning second being more effective. The interview data revealed that learners used captions to increase their attention, improve processing, reinforce previous knowledge, and analyze language. Learners also reported using captions as a crutch.

How to create a tabbed notebook using power point.

The purpose of this paper is to show how traditional classroom materials can be integrated with the available
learning resources in the Internet. In most Spanish universities, the teaching context still requires a traditional methodology,
which in the case of the English language means using conventional media for language learning. However, this situation is
changing: the access to the Internet in English courses is being favored by institutions, and new trends in the teaching of
English based on communication and information technologies are being implemented. Therefore, the integration of the
existing materials with the information from the World Wide Web has become a necessity, although both types of the aching
resources are still valuable. We present an English textbook for students of telecommunications engineering, written as a
result of several years of experience as teachers of English at the Escuela Politécnica Superior de Gandía (Universidad
Politécnica de Valencia). The main criteria for this book have been, on the one hand, to integrate English in the engineering
curriculum by adopting a content-based approach, and on the other, to deliver language learning trough both traditional and
computer-based multimedia environments. Some sample tasks based on video clips from the web pages of selected
telecommunications multinationals are presented.
Index Terms — materials development, Internet, ESP

This blog post is the fourth in a special series I am dedicating to my coursebook series Boost! during the month of June. Boost! is a six-strand, four-level skills and integrated skills series made for learners aged 10-15. In my...