Video and Interactive Multimedia Technologies in French for the 1990s

Abstract

on video and the French teacher in the French Review. At the time, this article very adequately described the current video usage and the video options generally available to French teachers. Since then, however, a quite different scenario of video has emerged-literally, constituting a new world for course authors to examine. The availability and increased use of new technologies (videodisk, multimedia video clipmakers, and presentation tools, satellite receiving systems, VCR's with built-in video standards converters and freeze-frame capabilities, digital video interactive, etc.) and a new hybrid of authentic video materials which respond to teachers' needs for prepared activities and transcripts now exist. This paper derives primarily from the early stages of my experience as project director and French language coordinator of the Language 3 Initiative (L3), a foray into technology-enhanced language programs for third-semester French, German, Japanese, and Spanish at the Pennsylvania State University. The purpose of this paper is to reflect my thinking in examining the new possibilities for video usage in the French language curriculum, in particular for a third-semester language course which forms a part of the larger L3 technology project. Included are a description of the initiative, the underlying principles and implications of video technology as it relates to second language acquisition theory, curricular goals, objectives, and examples of use in French 3, and recommendations for curricular implementation. The L3 project as a whole focuses simultaneously and iteratively on four aspects of video and interactive usage in the classroom: 1) definition of the scope of the project and of its research agenda, 2) creation of materials and/ or selection of video/interactive video programs from other sources, 3) training for both students and teachers in the appropriate uses of video and interactive multimedia technologies, and 4) use with students in the classroom and assessment of the effectiveness of this approach. The last two issues are important and will be addressed in a later paper; in the interests of time and space they are mentioned only as they relate to the first two. Since the third semester of French instruction has experimented the most with the incorporation of video and began full implementation of the

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