This is an educational website for those wanting to develop their English language and learn about different subject specific topics. For tutors by tutors is the aim of ESOL UK, to bring you language learning mediated by video, audio and the internet; the internet for independent learner access but with conventional worksheets for classroom use as well. These materials are suitable for both language and literacy learners. Many of these materials were developed in collaboration with ESOL tutors at Leeds City College.
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‘The moving image is a shared and vital global language … often more appropriate than written texts or still images as a way of presenting ideas or processes,’ (British Film Industry, 2000: 2). For spanning the auditory gap with visual bridges, no where is a global language more indispensable than when learning a second language. Video provides immediate and easy access to a visual language which most of us share, albeit with some cultural variation that makes for interesting comparison.
Listening to other people in the target language and culture and being able to watch them speak is an obvious feature of video. Video offers easy playback at different speeds and allows for auditory analysis of the content of language (the meaning) and also the form: accent, dialect, rhythm, pitch, ellipses, stress, speed, tone, pronunciation, etc, which will vary dependent on the region and the speaker. Beyond the auditory, the global language of the moving image offers many visual, paralinguistic props which are difficult to evidence with paper yet are immediately accessible in audio-visual format: context, location, physical gestures, facial animation, dynamics of human interaction, phrase/gesture synchronisation, lip movement, etc.
These auditory and visual learning cues make for successful language acquisition. Their combined association in a multimedia product are powerful facilitators of memory retention and retrieval. We learn by repetition but better by association so the more senses and learning cues we can exploit the more memory-friendly the learning becomes. Video also affords low-anxiety learning because it gives temporary relief from the customary rules, drills, grammar exercises, paperwork and repetition typically associated with the language and literacy classrooms.
BFI (2000) Moving Images in the Classroom, A secondary Teachers’ Guide to Using Film & Television. British Film Institute. London: Cromwell Press Ltd.
Site created by Stephen Woulds, Sep 2008; Leeds City College and School of Education, University of Leeds.
