En Yoshiko Saito-Abbott, Gus Leonard, Richard Donovan, Tom Abbott, and Jonni Dugan (eds.

), Emerging Technologies: In Teaching Languages and Cultures. Theory and Practice: Foreign Language Pedagogy with Evolving Technology, Proceedings of 8th Digital Stream Conference, California State University, Monterey, California, March 23-25, 2006. California, 2008. ISSN 1946-1526. http://php.csumb.edu/wlc/ojs/index.php/ds/article/view/21/23

Media Literacy in Language and Culture Learning

Teresa Fernndez Ulloa California State University, Bakersfield tfernandez_ulloa@csub.edu
The following presents a research project that we are carrying out at California State University, Bakersfield. This research focuses on finding technological tools and strategies to help teachers teach young people to understand how the media works, and to use media, especially movies and documentaries, to teach language, literature and culture (from Spanish speaking countries). We will foster critical thinking activities, alternative points of view, and we will teach Semiotics. The basic method is that of a spiral curriculum, whose fundamental principle is that the key concepts of a discipline can be taught in some form to any students at any level. Finally, we will provide some specific examples of our area of interest: Spanish language and culture for university students.

INTRODUCTION In this article we present a research project that we are carrying out at California State University, Bakersfield 1. We intend to develop strategies and to find technological tools to help teachers to teach young people using media. We research strategies to acquire language, culture, society, and Semiotic knowledge. We call it media literacy plus. The basic method is that of a spiral curriculum, whose fundamental principle is that the key concepts of a discipline can be taught in some form to any student at any level. In 1960, J. Bruner proposed this concept to facilitate structuring a curriculum: A curriculum as it develops should revisit these basic ideas repeatedly, building upon them until the student has grasped the full formal apparatus that goes with them (1960: 13). Our idea is to teach some principles and tools (text analysis) in a rather intuitive way at the beginning, starting at the lower levels, and then revisit them with a more formal or operational rigour and with a broader level of abstraction and comprehensiveness. We will give some specific examples of our area of interest: Spanish language and culture for undergraduate college students. We will research the main strategies related to these approaches to media use: Spanish language literacy; literature (how genres, topics, time, space, and so on, are expressed in literature and in film); critical thinking activities (detecting bias, inconsistencies); alternative points of view; society studies (family, gender, sexuality, violence); crossmedia studies and interdisciplinary strategies (how issues of our time are simultaneously reflected in the mass media; how a topic in the media will need discussion using knowledge from literature, sociology, psychology); Semiotics (the science of signs; it studies how meaning is generated in a film, television, and other works of art); and reading the media environment (how it works technically, how its use is developed). This project has two main sections: A. Using media: strategies for approaches We will investigate the theory relating to language learning and motivation. We intend to illustrate the strategies with practical examples of how media may be employed in the classroom in a manner which both facilitates language learning and further encourages motivation. We will study the different approaches to teaching, including films, with the intention of changing the student's role from that of passive receiver of the teacher's interpretation to that of an active constructor of meaning who respects a variety of responses and interpretations. The teachers role should be changed from lecturer to coach.

RCU Grant, Fall 2005.

B. Software and technological devices This project is also studying how to use technology to develop those aspects of media literacy, e.g., computer programs, some of them free software, that we can use to work with and to create materials for our classes (Intervideo WinDVD; Divace; internet-suited multimedia technologies ;audio and video streaming; integrative and collaborative tools; discussion groups, chat rooms, whiteboards, shared workspaces, e-mail.) USING MEDIA Getting Started: Steps to Follow Have a future vision. By giving media literacy to our students, most of them future teachers, we intend them to pass this learning to their future middle school students. There, collaborative learning and interdisciplinary units are quite common. They will be able to introduce media literacy concepts in language arts, social studies, languages. Learn from what your colleagues are doing in their courses, and integrate media literacy activities into curricular goals. Get help. It is always necessary to get help from technical experts (on computer technology, video production). In media literacy, you can always use movies and documentaries, or even recordings from news or any kind of TV program, but production of messages is essential. Instructors have to know how to produce messages to prepare suited material for their classes, and also provide their students with those tools. In the 21st century, they will need to master the skills of communicating, no matter their future jobs. Choosing the suited materials to achieve your teaching objectives is essential. You should create new ones, too, and keep the ones your previous students have done. In your classes, acknowledge that many points of view, opinions and interpretations are possible. Students usually ask for the right answer. They should learn that in this world most of the time there is not only one. Connect to students worlds. They do not have our experiences and probably are interested in different things than we are, or want them to be. Try to find interesting materials; find out the kind of things they like. Starting there, we will be able to move forward and introduce some other more mature materials little by little. Ask them about the films they watch, the TV programs they see. Find out things that worry them: job, love, racism, sexuality. You can use materials that illustrate those topics. Interaction of both things is desired. It is always a good idea to choose films based upon books and ask them to read the book. See the similarities and differences between film language and verbal language. Through teaching film language (movies are always more appealing than books), you can eventually get them more interested in books. In a way, film is the literature of the modern day2. There are two main paths that you would want to try: analyze media (Semiotics, topics) and construct media messages. Both are important. You could dedicate different courses to them or integrate them in one. There is not only one philosophy about teaching and about media in the classroom, choose you own approach after exploring what your department or school, and your students need. Some Strategies Much has been debated over teaching strategies aimed at learner motivation. As we enter the digital age, the uses of technological tools are rapidly being integrated into the classroom setting as a way to support these efforts. Several teaching institutions have smart classrooms; these are rooms with standardized computing capabilities such as internet access, basic processing programs, digitalized projectors, etc. At the basic pedagogical level, these technologies can be of uttermost importance and of great asset toward
2

Danny Boyle, Film Director. http://www.filmeducation.org/aboutus.html

the strategizing of language learning activities. One part of media technology that is currently being studied is the use of film as a way to motivate and develop oral and written studies. As we proceed, we will observe how positive results can be obtained by using films in teaching institution. As we already know, television and films play a central role in childrens lives. A study conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation (Preschoolers Wired and Tuned In) states that children spend an average of two hours a day watching television, using computers, and playing video games; that is well over the 39 minutes they spend reading or are being read to (Source: teacher librarian). With this in mind, let us observe how this media usage is being used to produce positive learner motivation. Until recently, media in the classroom setting such as television and film had no place in comparison to the printed page, but as technology rapidly advances, creative possibilities to produce learner motivation through visual imaging arise. Several researchers have conducted studies on how to use film as a way to further expand motivational learning and media literacy. The British Film Institute (bfi) has explored the concepts between moving images and literacy with a resource called Story Shorts (films that last as long as 5 to 15 minutes). As a pedagogical approach, these films are complete narratives, and not clips, that adapt to the classroom setting, context, class duration, comprehensive level, etc. The main focus of this concept is to obtain suitable language competency advancements through the use of moving images in relevance to the students oral and writing skills. The bfi created these Story Shorts that were also accompanied by lesson plans. Many on the project followed these plans, but other created activities of their own, which was seen as a significant facet of the pilot project. After being implemented, the project produced very encouraging results; students instructed to translate visual and audio aspects from Story Shorts showed positive development through their descriptive prose. The students, characterized as passive linguists 3, after the exercises, wrote individual responses which were more sustained. One remark states: The children learned to interpret a film in the same way we interpret a text and thats something new. They took all the bits of the film they could visualize and talk about and used them in their writing, not just writing about the film, I mean all their fictional writing. One other instructor stated that after repeated showings of the same Story Shorts, this created and provoked new ways of seeing and interpreting what they saw on screen. They comprehended that some objects could correspond to different things, and this, in turn, would lead to the routine use of a thesaurus as the students would search for new words to express textually what they saw visually. These results produce a clear understanding of how visual literacy can be viewed as an imperative constituent towards the larger symbiotic communicative process. Through observing this teaching process, we can examine Vygotskys scaffolding effect; this theory underlines the basic principles of relationship between textual and visual reception: characteristics such as color, shape camera positioning, and framing in relationship to text decoding (style, grammar, intonation, and paragraphing). It exemplifies how students make the relationship between these two aspects and how it is used to further develop advancements in literacy through the use of media literacy. Some theorists say that the differences between visual and textual literacy, and not the commonalities, are what make the reciprocal relationship so productive. In further analyzing this reciprocal relationship, we can conclude that image media can augment and serve as a support for existing literacy teaching, and that, by exploring the visual and textual differences, we can understand the communicative features. Some of them consist of what is called the grammar of visual design to those of reading and writing, or the relationship between zoom, edit, pan, and verb, adjective, noun, etc. Although it is too early to understand the long-

They could describe and talk about language structure and characterization at an acceptable level, but could not write about them.

lasting effects of this pilot program, in terms of efficiency, the results show an increase in self-confidence on the part of the pupils4. On strategizing lesson plans, Stephen Ryan gives us a model in his article, Using Films to Develop Motivation. Ryan taught English to children in Japan. Ryan states that a problem that often occurs in class when showing films is that students show great interest in using movies as a way to further expand language learning, but, once the film is on, they tend to sleep through most or all of it. So what can be done to help minimize boredom and activate learning motivation? Here, the key notion lies on the successful and proper usage and selection of the raw material. The first step states that the movie chosen should represent the wishes of the students and should conform to institutional constraints: availability, timing, and content. Once the movie is selected, it should then be shown in its subtitled version due to the fact that without them the language content might be too advanced and difficult for the learners. Such a showing obviously has few direct pedagogical merits, but it is hoped that the short-term sacrifice will be amply rewarded in the long run (Ryan 4). Step three involves dividing the students into groups of three. The movie is then shown once again but without subtitles. The groups task is to note any short scene involving three protagonists. The next step involves a role play/listening activity. It involves a reenactment of one of the scenes they have noted. They have to write a script based upon that scene; it does not have to be an exact replica as long as it provides an approximation to the action and context. The fifth step is to make an audio recording of the students version of the scene; each student should take the role of one of the protagonists. The last step to this motivational process involves, if possible, a dubbing of the students voices on the video. One other option would be to do a scene play back with the accompaniment of the audio recordings minus the actual sound from the video. Although this type of project obviously requires a great amount of effort and time, it is very encouraging and motivational. Students, at a basic level, enjoy such an activity. It helps them become active participants, which in turn makes them positively inclined towards language erudition. FILM LANGUAGE (A COURSE FOR SPANISH MAJORS) We have given several examples of things to do with films in the class. In this section, we will explain briefly how we developed a course of film language study in Spanish. At the same time, we taught about different cultures because the films were from Latin America and Spain except two from the USA, presenting situations of Hispanic people in this country. The films were on gender, sexuality, violence, work problemstopics that allowed reflection and discussion. All of this was done through a set sequence of steps: the scaffolding approach. In this class, students learned to analyze a movie. We followed the scheme that traditional rhetoric analysis gives us: Inventio. Main ideas and genre of the film Dispositio. Organization of elements into a narrative structure Elocutio. Express with language (in this case, film language) the materials of invention organized by using a disposition or structure

Inventio Content, expressed using a certain genre, which makes us to expect something specific before watching the film. This section discusses several aspects. TOPIC: As we do in text analysis classes, the topic will be expressed using a sentence that captures the essence of the ideas in the film.
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http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/literacy/prof_dev/articles_archive/659883/bfi_storyshorts.PDF

GENRE: There are a limited number of narrative elements in any story (characters, plot, historical setting, dress, dialogue). A combination of certain specific types of elements will create a formula or pattern: western, gangster, horror, war, comedy, drama, melodrama, science-fiction. Each genre has its own conventions. Students are given a list of the elements that characterize a genre, and they have to identify different films. They realize to what extent we can predict the end of the film knowing its genre, and they reflect on why we still want to watch the movie (usually because we are looking for a particular emotional experience). Documentary is also studied, and how to be a critic with these supposedly truthful situations. Documentary could be defined, according to pioneer of such filmmaking, John Grierson, as the creative interpretation of actuality.5 Different kinds of documentaries can be identified: expository, observational, interactive, and reflective.6 Grierson believed that greater realism would result if you used location shots, ordinary people and encouraged improvisation in films. This documentary drama is what, for example, Ken Loach does, and in our class we had an example with a story settled in the United States: Bread and Roses (2000), about the right to unionize and the illegal workers. In the last years, a type of documentary called mockumentary has appeared in the screen with relative success. It is presented as if it were a documentary, though it is not factual. It is a commonly used medium for parody and satire.7 We worked with A Day without a Mexican, that we could place in this category, into the dramatic subclass. CENSORSHIP: In different cultures, censors work differently. A good topic for research and discussion in class is the definition of eroticism and pornography, and the differences regarding cultures, e.g., Hispanic (Spanish and Latin American, with differences between them) versus North American. Another topic for debatethe effects of screen violencefalls into two main categories: imitation and desensitising. IDEOLOGY: Values, viewpoints and meaning/messages that a film might be able to communicate. We worked finding the ideology expressed in two ways: explicit and implicit. Dispositio Organization of elements into a structure. We study several aspects: TIME: Are the events presented chronologically, or with flashbacks and flashforwards? Plot could open in media res (in the middle of the action) or in extrema res (at the end of the action). We could also find parallel stories (film Flores de otro mundo). Films differ from reality in several aspects, and time is one of the most important ones. We can find elongation of time, to focus on the struggle of the characters (the main character running toward the police station at the end of Das contados. Movie time has slowed down to create suspense), but temporal ellipsis is more common. We do not see the whole story in real time; we assume times passes (change of seasons in Flores de otro mundo). VIEWPOINT: The position of the audience will depend upon through whose eyes the filmmaker has chosen to tell the story. The audience will be an onlooker, or the camera can bring the audience into the narrative space to see things from a particular perspective. Elocutio or film language Camera work, editing, lighting, sound and color are part of one directors style of telling a story. The same story can be told in very different ways. The codes are not only visual: music and camera shots can

5 6 7

http://www.filmeducation.org/secondary/documentary2004/whatis.html http://www.filmeducation.org/secondary/documentary2004/style.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mockumentary

focus on a character or give us an impression of fear or surprise. The study of these systems of signs is called semiology or semiotics8. We should consider: Camera a) Type of shot. We have to indicate the amount of subject matter contained within a frame, how far the camera is from the subject, and the perspective of the viewer. Each shot has a different purpose and effect. We can distinguish a great variety of shots, these are the main ones: Establishing the shot. Opening shot used to set the scene. It is usually a very long shot or extreme long shot. Extreme long shot (or extreme wide shot). A panoramic view of an exterior location, photographed from a great distance, usually films begin with this shot so the viewer gets oriented to where s/he is. Very long shot (or very wide shot). A wide location where people is included. It is more descriptive and close to the subject than the extreme long shot, but still much further away than a long shot. The emphasis is on placing the characters. Long shot. The subject takes the full frame. (There is also a full shot: full body of a person, without taking into consideration the environment). Medium shot. Shows less of a scene than the long shot; the camera seems closer to the subject; generally includes the body from the waist up. Medium close shot. Halfway between a medium shot (and more direct) and a close up shot. The character appears from the armpit up. American shot (also called shot). Includes the body from the knees up. Group shot. It shows the action and situation of a group of people. Two shot (a medium shot with two actors. Variation: three shot). The background is important but the characters are predominant. Over the shoulder shot. Looking from behind a person at the subject. Close up shot. Shows a small part of the subject or scene; it is useful to show detail, like a person's emotional face; it is expressive, dramatic. Extreme close up shot. A detail; if it is related to human body we will see a hand, a nose, the eyes It analyzes psychologically the situations. b) Camera movements (kinds and speeds). Among them: panning (scanning the scene horizontally), tracking (also called dolly shots and trucking; the camera is placed on a moving vehicle and moves alongside the actions, generally following a moving figure), tilting (scanning a scene vertically), zoom (the camera needs not be moved; the lens can zip a camera in and out of a scene very quickly), crane shots (dolly shots in the air; moving a camera up, down, left, right, swooping in on action or moving diagonally out of it), aerial shots (usually taken from a helicopter; often used at the beginning of a film to establish setting). Sometimes the operators body is used as a camera support, either holding it by hand or using a harness; this is known as handheld camera
8

We can define semiology or semiotics as the study of signs. We may not realize it, but in fact semiology can be applied to all sorts of human endeavours, including cinema, theatre, dance, architecture, painting, politics, medicine, history, and religion. Robert M. Sller, http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/semiolog.htm.

(for example, at the beginning of Bread and roses, to give the impression of being a documentary; it brings realism to the story). These movements can create a specific effect: in Los lunes al sol, a character walks into a room and the camera slowly pans around. We feel as if we were the character looking around. c) Angles. The relationship between the camera and the object being photographed (i.e., the angle) gives emotional information; the more extreme the angle, the more symbolic the shot. Eye-level (the perspective most familiar to us; as though it is a human actually observing the scene); Low (the camera is below the image photographed; in this shot the camera looks up at the subject, making it seem important, powerful; it can also inspire fear or insecurity in the viewer. The background tends to be sky or ceiling; the lack of detail adds disorientation). There is also a worms-eye angle (a more extreme low angle). High (the camera is high above the image photographed; it looks down on the subject, decreasing its importance or power). Birds eye angle (extreme high-angle shot; the camera is directly or almost directly above the image photographed; people can be made look insignificant, part of a wider scheme of things). Oblique/canted angle (the camera is tilted, i.e., not placed horizontal to floor level, to suggest imbalance, transition and instability). d) Lens and focus (wide, normal; distorting; use of zoom; sharp, soft focus) e) Position (distancing the audience; involving the audience; viewpoint) Lighting, color and atmosphere achieved We could have natural light, or strongly contrasted; use of black and white; sepia tones, and use of special effects. In a studio, the lighting is usually from three sources: Sound We can distinguish two types of sound: diegetic or nondiegetic. Diegetic: is part of the film world we are watching. This can be dialogue, music or sound effects which come from a source within the film world. We can see the person or object that is making the sound (on screen) or not (off screen). Examples: the dance at the beginning of Flores de otro mundo, or the radio cassette that the Dominican women have in the kitchen, in the same movie. Nondiegetic: sound which we do not recognize as part of the film world such as a voice-over or background music. We could also take into account voices, speech used in dialogue (accents, dialects; formal/informal language), background conversation only half heard, voice over, thoughts, commentary, explanations; use of music, and sound effects (natural, mechanical). The key light (the brightest and most influential). The back light (counteracts the effect of the key light, thus making the figure look more 'rounded'). The filler light (softens the harsh shadows created by the use of the back and key lights).

There may be more than one of these.

Use of Editing Editing begins when the film is finished. This is a matter of choosing which shots to include, which to put next to which, and what method to use to join the shots together. The filmmaker will decide the pace, treatment of time (chronological, shots rearranged, use of parallel cutting for simultaneous action, use of flashback), and use of transitions. Some of these are: straight cut (fast transition from a shot to another); dissolve (also known as cross dissolve or crossfade; two shots overlap each other with the first gradually disappearing while the next one appears and then remains alone on the screen. Thus, one shot blends into the next one); fade out (it works much like a theater curtain, and can be a fade to black), and wipe (there are hundreds of different pushes or wipes, one example would have one image push another off the screen to the left, right, up or down). SOFTWARE AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICES TO CREATE OUR OWN MOVIES Instructors and students could create their own materials by using some basic recording tools and some sort of movie making program. In regards to movie making programs, there are hundreds of them, for example, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Ulead VideoStudio 8, Pinnacle Studio Plus 9, Adobe video collection 2.5, Roxio Easy Media Creator 7.5, WinDVD Creator 2. Two of the most commonly used programs are Windows Movie Maker and iMovie. The first one comes integrated with the Windows XP operating system; the second comes integrated in the Macintosh operating system. Both have fairly simple user interfaces and are user friendly. These two programs are ideal for the beginner; they consist of simple drop and drag commands, which in turn create easy audio and visual constructing and editing. Apart from those, on the Internet we can find some free, easy-to-use programs such as Chopper XP and Soundtrack Producer. Chopper XP is a DVD cutting program, which lets you extract part of a VOB9 file and save it as a new file. The interface is straight forward and easy to use, just mark the In and Out points and save the section to a VOB file. The program also lets you set any priority of extraction and displays the estimated time left for extraction. Soundtrack Producer allows audio (WAV) files to be overdubbed onto a video clip (AVI file). Features include audio in/out points, video and audio preview, intuitive drag and drop interface. You can look for more software at: http://www.download.com http://www.freewarehome.com http://www.donfreeware.com http://www.tucows.com http://www.freewarefiles.com CONCLUSION AND SIGNIFICANCE Nowadays media and technology are so important in our students lives that it seems vital to teach them to really understand what they see in the screen; to motivate them to learn different things by using films, and to teach them how to use technology. In order to do that, we need to know the possibilities: on one side, the devices and software, and, on the other side, the approaches and strategies to be used.
REFERENCES Boerner, M. English 2700-101 books into movies white 120. [Internet document available at http://www22.homepage.villanova.edu/margaret.boerner/2700BooksMoviesF03Syllabus.htm] British Film Institute. Story Shorts-using films to teach literacy, [Internet document available at http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/primary/features/literacy/659883/bfi_storyshorts.PDF] Bruner, J. 1960. The Process of Education. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Center for Media Literacy. 10 Classroom approaches to Media Literacy. [Internet document available at http://medialit.org/reading_room/article338.html]
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DVD Video Movie File. A VOB (Video OBject) contains several streams multiplexed together: Video, Audio and Subtitles. Video is MPEG-2, audio can be AC-3, Linear PCM, Mpeg 2 multichannel or MPEG1 layer2 2 channel audio. http://filext.com/detaillist.php?extdetail=VOB

Describing shots. [Internet document available at http://www.mediaknowall.com/camangles.html) Film language. [Internet document available at http://www.filmeducation.org/secondary/concept/filmlang/docs/frameset.html] Jones, C.. Transitions in Video Editing. [Internet document available at http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/articles/transitions/index.htm] Monaco, J. 2000. How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, Multimedia: Language, History, Theory. Oxford University Press. New Study Finds Children Age Zero to Six Spend As Much Time With TV, Computers and Video Games As Playing Outside. [Internet document available at http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia102803nr.cfm] Oblinger, D. and J. L. Oblinger, eds. 2005. Educating the Net Generation. [Internet document available at http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen] Parker, D. 1999. Youve Read the Book, Now Make the Film: Moving Image Media, Print Literacy & Narrative. English in Education, 33.1, 24-35, NATE, Sheffield. Ryan, S. 1998. Using Films to Develop Learner Motivation. The Internet TESL Journal, IV, 11. [Internet document available at http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Articles/Ryan-Films.html] Scholes, R. 1982. Semiotics and Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press. Smith, M.K. 2002. Jerome S. Bruner and the process of education, The encyclopedia of informal education. [Internet document available at http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm] Using films in the Classroom. [Internet document available at http://womens-studies.osu.edu/pedagogy/Film/usingfilms.htm]