Language Acquisition in the Classroom: The Role of Digital Video

This paper looks at the potential of using DVD—digital versatile disc—for language learning. Seven hypotheses are presented on how oral proficiency may be developed within multimedia classroom environments. These hypotheses are culled from several areas of SLA research. They focus on how language acquisition may be accomplished within a FL teaching situation, i.e., in the home country of the language learner with little or no face-to-face access to native speakers of the target language. It is argued that multimedia applications, particularly digital video, provide language teachers and learners with effective means to make language acquisition in the classroom viable in a way that has not been possible before the advent of powerful multimedia computers. Consequently, foreign language classrooms need to be equipped with multimedia computers and projectors so that digital video may be used for presentation and practice as well as the acquisition of listening and speaking proficiency. Through digital video—and through other features of digital media such as easy communication around the world—teaching and learning conditions in FL classrooms may become similar to conditions that apply when living in the target culture. It is important that teachers have access to these new media so that they can integrate them in classroom activities. In this paper, I will focus primarily on the acquisition of listening and speaking proficiency because these skills often play only a minor role in FL classrooms despite the fact that they often figure prominently in curricular guidelines and statements of objectives. However, many of the remarks I will make may be equally applicable to teaching reading and writing (cf. Plass, 1999 for reading and Tschirner, 1999 for writing). In conclusion, it will be argued that FL learning is as much a social process as it is a psychological one. Learners need to be part of a community of speakers and they have to be able to plunge into and participate in the world of native speakers. The digital classroom meets these requirements in a learner friendly way and it marks an important step towards making language acquisition possible in the classroom.