"VIDEODEUTSCH": A COMPUTER ASSISTED APPROACH TO VERBAL AND NONVERBAL CULTURAL LITERACY

Abstract

The integration  of culture into the language learning experience has always been tenuous either because teachers feel inadequate in their knowledge of the foreign culture or because they have not been adequately trained for the teaching of that culture.

This paper characterizes an interactive  video project, VIDEODEUTSCH, which facilitates the controlled access of video material and the presentation  of other language and cultural materials in a pre-programmed manner. This text can be used by the learner in the laboratory or it can be teacher- controlled in the classroom.  The organization  of the program allows the student to participate with verbal and nonverbal linguistic and cultural phenomena in a realistic way which begins to approach actual experience in the culture.

This paper describes VIDEODEUTSCH in terms of its hardware, its authoring system, the types of visual reference materials used, the organization  of the phases which make up each of its units, what it teaches, and gives a sample of its computer programs.