The Multi-Skills Commercial Second Language Curriculum Meets the Videocamera

Abstract

SINCE THE MID-SEVENTIES, an increasing number of articles have proposed methods for incorporating video technology into the classroom. Similarly, within the last decade, increasing attention has been paid to courses which focus on teaching for commercial purposes, or language courses. In a previous article which proposed a model for using the videocamera in the classroom, Alice Musick McLean and I posited that the videocamera could be a powerful tool in the business classroom since it is often already a well-accepted self-evaluation device in business schools and corporate training facilities (Orban and McLean 662). Over the last several years, I have had occasion to test this hypothesis by using video in an advanced Commercial French quarter-long course at DePaul University, and my findings substantiate the positive effects of active video, especially as a tool to develop oral skills. This paper presents an overview of the special needs of the commercial curriculum, the textbooks available in this area, and the most important features of active video. It then provides a description of the particular curriculum created for Commercial French at DePaul, which integrates video's oral skills-building potential into a total curriculum geared toward developing reading, writing, speaking, listening, and cultural awareness through authentic materials.' While the particular findings apply to a French curriculum, they can be adapted to any commercial classroom. Active video proves to be a powerful tool for sensitizing students interested in for commercial purposes to their level of linguisitic competence and, through self-evaluation techniques, to the areas in which linguistic finetuning and reassessment would be most opportune. The curriculum included interactive video materials and active video (autoscopie). The former involves playing a prepared videotape in class which the instructor stops periodically to elicit student responses; the latter involves taping students under instructor supervision. The curriculum did not include passive video (viewing prepared videotapes without instructor intervention) or pro-active video (taping students performing their own written materials). This paper will only briefly discuss the use of interactive

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