Using Multimedia in the Foreign Language Classroom | Page 42

students to use the language they have learnt themselves. Based on what they have
seen, and having been presented with the appropriate language, they can make
comparisons between the video and their own experiences. The language which they
will need to use is fully contextualized.

3. Video techniques
3.1 Silent Viewing
Tomalin (1990: 10) defines silent viewing as “playing the video extract with
the sound turned down. The learners watch the video and decide what is happening
and what the speakers are saying”. Silent viewing allows students to pay attention to
the paralinguistic features of the language before focusing on the linguistic ones. This
is necessary for students of primary levels who feel overwhelmed of the dense
information which the video conveys when image and sound are delivered together.
Silent viewing can be used either at the comprehension stage, at the beginning
of the lesson, or at the production stage, as a stimulus for conversation. In the first
case the students are asked to pay attention to the visual characteristics of the video,
while at the second one they can make predictions concerning what the characters say.
A repetition of the video with the sound turned on allows students to confirm or reject
the hypotheses they have made.
3.2 Freeze frame
This technique allows the learner to focus on very specific parts of the video.
This can serve two purposes. In the first case the student is asked what she sees,
which can elicit language appropriate for description. In the second case, the video is
frozen and the students are asked to say what has happened so far. If the video extract
which was shown is rather large, students are asked to summarize what has happened.
On the other hand, very short extracts of the video suggest for detailed language
study. In this case, students are asked either to repeat a chunk of speech which the
teacher considers worth mastering or they are asked to rephrase it. In the first case
students enrich their linguistic repertoire, while in the second one she has the chance
to use the language she has learnt creatively. Students can also be asked to predict
what will happen next, which requires from them to use language more freely.
However, it should be kept in mind that such a task is linguistically more demanding

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