A Theme-based Multimedia English Learning Environment and the Underlying
Language Elements
Ming-tyi Wu
Chieh-min Yang
Southern Taiwan University of Technology
woody@mail.stut.edu.tw
Abstract
A conceptual framework of language teaching and learning is used as a
roadmap for the discussion of the important issues involved in language
teaching and learning. Utilizing a film and two documentaries that are related
to a common theme, an example of a theme-based language learning
environment is designed. The contents of the materials are analyzed to
illustrate the distinctions among background information, cultural values, and
contextual information. The discourses from the film show that they are
highly related to the contexts, personal values, feelings, judgments and
interpersonal relationships; the narratives from documentaries are more
straightforward and contain references mainly to the facts and events in the
world and how people look at them. Utterances in a language are the outcome
of the dynamic functions among related variables and their meanings go
beyond the surface of words. Language needs to be exemplified in a
meaningful, interrelated entity rather than explained in bits and pieces.
Introduction
A few years ago, the author (Wu 1998) proposed a conceptual framework of
language teaching and learning to serve as a general roadmap for the exploration of
the related issues in the entire process of it (see Figure 1 below). It was argued that
language should not be considered as a static system which includes several
subsystems such as the sound system, the lexical system, the grammar system, and the
discourse system. Whatever not included in these systems was put under the term
“culture.” It is not uncommon to hear that “learning a language includes learning its
culture.” In other words, “culture” has been conveniently used to cover everything
which language teachers and researchers seem so reluctant to make clear. Elsewhere
the author has made distinctions among background information, cultural values, and
contextual information, where background information refers to the historical,
geographical, physical, and social events and facts of the target language speakers’
society, cultural values refers to the faiths and common beliefs those people hold and
their ways of thinking, contextual information, however, refers to the exact situation
where some particular utterances occur, given all those commonly held background
and cultural information and values (Wu 1997).
In the framework, language is not seen as a static system. It is interwoven with
our thoughts and comprises dynamic factors for meaning formation and expression.
Such dynamic factors cannot be comprehensibly described. So, for language teaching
and learning, a notion of language exemplification was also proposed. Thematic
stories, events/topics, and the underlying discourses are used for the exemplification
of the embedded meanings, i.e. meanings take shape in these stories, events/topics and
discourses so that learners can comprehend them through these vehicles. Learners do
not learn the target language via the abstract written symbols or sound streams;
instead, they learn the content and are induced to learn linguistic knowledge and
language skills.
There are debates over whether second language instructions should focus on
content or form (see e.g. Day & Shapson, 2001; Ellis, 2001; Oller, 2005). Day and
Shapson (ibid., p. 47) reports that immersion children show persistent weaknesses in
their grammatical skills despite the fluent, functional proficiency they achieve in their
second language. Oller (ibid., p. 92) argues that there is growing agreement and
empirical evidence that developing proficiency in any language depends on access to
the dynamic referential relations between target forms and particular persons, things,
events, and relations in the world of experience. He finds the common ground
between form and content and claims that language teaching can benefit by providing
access not only to the targeted language forms, but to the dynamic referential relations
that link those forms with particular content in authentic contexts of communication.
The concept of language depicted in the framework highly accords with Oller’s
perception here in that it emphasizes the use of events and topics in authentic
materials as content for meaningful learning and as vehicle for language awareness
activities. In other words, a focus on content is for fluency and the focus on form is
for accuracy.
Themes
Events, Topics, & Discourses
Embedded Meanings
Linguistic Knowledge & Language Skills
Sub-lexical Level - Phonological Awareness
Morphological Awareness
Lexical Level - Vocabulary
Speech Level - Formulaic Speech
Oral Speech
(Listening & Speaking)
Written Language
(Reading & Writing)
Objectives
Material selection
Methodological considerations
Syllabus design
Teachers
Media &
Facilities
Material presentation & learning activities
Input
Processing
Working
Memory
Long-term
Memory
Access & Use
Output
Feedback
to the
teacher
Evaluation
Appropriate
Inappropriate or
output
erroneous output
Confirmation
Correction
Feedback
to the
learner
Figure 1. A conceptual framework of language teaching and learning
The realization of the concept of language in a larger scheme which incorporates
the dynamic factors involved in language production and reception is crucial here, but
what these factors actually are and how they combine to work need to be depicted
more clearly so that language teachers can realize why and how they should be
brought into effect in language teaching and learning. In fact, language teachers’
realization of language will decide how consecutive language syllabi are designed in
the educational settings. According to the framework, language teachers’ perception
toward language will affect how language teaching objectives should be set up, what
kind of materials should be selected and what teaching methods should be adopted to
form an effective syllabus. Richards & Rodgers (1986) have put it clearly that each of
the language teaching approaches and methods has its presuppositions of language
and language learning.
Media and facilities available for carrying out learning activities and presenting
learning materials to the learners also play an important role in the teaching process.
This is where computers and other teaching facilities come into play. Materials
presented in the teaching activities become the input of the language learner. Again,
learner’s perception and realization of the input is also decisive in the learning process.
The input has to be meaningful to the learner and hence comprehensible and learnable
(see Krashen, 1985). So, what is meaningful to the learner becomes the main issue
here. From the material side, it should be rich in content to be meaningful; from the
learner’s side, it should be related to the learner’s interests and thoughts to be
meaningful. Obviously, a sheer focus on linguistic elements will be rather painstaking
rote learning and will not make too much sense to the learner. This is where a theme
and content-based approach find its stance.
Language learning is a very complex and long-term process. In fact, there are
very large volumes of studies devoted to it under the term of “Second Language
Acquisition” (SLA; see e.g. Kramsch, 2000; Larsen-Freeman, 2000; Tarone, 2000;
Swain, 2000; Shehadeh, 2002; Julstijn, 2002; Julstijn, 2005). Other studies focus on
learner factors such as learning strategies (e.g. Zhang, 2003), motivation (e.g. DÖrnyei,
2001), anxiety (e.g. Horwitz, 2001), age (e.g. Singleton, 2001), individual difference
(e.g. Ehrman et al., 2003), and aptitude (e.g. Sparks & Ganschow, 2001). Most studies
take either a psychological or linguistic perspective or both.
Kearsley and Blomeyer (2004) use an onion skin approach for a figurative
illustration of learning (Figure 2, modified from Kearsley & Blomeyer, ibid., p. 46)
and argue that it is the layer of outer conditions, which concerns learning resources
and tools, that educators can do the most. Yet, most of the SLA studies focus on the
internal layer where learning may be described at informational level which involves
information processing, storage, and retrieving whereas other studies work on the
layer called the inner conditions of leaning where learner’s existing knowledge,
motivation, learning strategies, and other learner factors are the issues. There are also
some studies go into the core to investigate the biochemical aspect of learning which
is related to the field of neuroscience study (see e.g. Segalowitz, 2001; Schumann,
2001). While each aspect of studies may have its own significance in its own terms,
language teachers, however, have to reflect on what to focus on so that both teaching
and learning can benefit most. In other words, language teachers should focus on
providing learners with meaningful resources and helpful tools so that they can build
up their sense of the target language and conduct long-term autonomous learning. If,
instead, the focus is on inner conditions, inner mechanism, or even biochemical
functions, language teaching and learning will be more analytical, deductive, and
rule-based. When that happens, learner’s own way of thinking comes into play and
hence what Yun & Jia (2003) call Chinglish or China English is inevitable.
Biochemical
Informational
Inner Conditions
Outer Conditions
Social Environment
Figure 2. A figurative illustration of learning (modified from Kearsley & Blomeyer,
2004, p. 46)
The final part of the framework includes learner output, formal and informal
evaluation to the output, and feedback to both the learner and the teacher. By adding
these elements to the framework, the process of language teaching and learning
becomes a circular one. Since this part of the framework is irrelevant to the topic of
this paper, we will simply skip the discussion about it.
Based on the presuppositions regarding the related concepts of language,
language teaching and language learning described above and under the grants from
the Ministry of Education, the author have built up a multimedia database of authentic
materials which comprises several million words, a storage and servo system with the
capacity of 4.3 TB, a teaching network of 8 computer labs, and a teaching and
learning platform with online tools (see Wu, 2005). However, such a comprehensive
system requires funding, time, human resources and follow-up maintenance. An
alternative is to create a much smaller scale multimedia teaching and learning
environment with some useful tools that are helpful both for material editing and
self-access learning. Such an environment can be easily set up by language teachers
after a few days’ training.
Utilizing a film and two documentaries that are related to a common theme,
military, as the materials, this paper provides an example of such a theme and
content-based language learning environment and further uses the contents to illustrate
the important elements included in language and how these elements are related to
each other.
An Overview of the Environment
A home page provides links to the materials related to the same theme (see
Figure 3 below):
Figure 3. The home page.
Oller’s (2005) argument that developing proficiency in any language depends on
access to the dynamic referential relations between target forms and particular persons,
things, events, and relations in the world of experience gives a strong support for the
idea of a theme-based instruction. If the target learners are students of the Military
Academy, the materials selected here will be highly related to their expertise and life
experience and hence will provide a suitable cut-in point for their English learning. By
the same token, materials related to other fields of study can be used as the cut-in
point for learners of each of the particular fields. In other words, language learning
materials can be more learner-specified and hence learner-centered. This kind of
materials will be more comprehensible for the particular group of learners and
hopefully they will be more motivated.
By clicking on one of the titles, the main screen of the particular title appears
(see Figure 4 for an example):
Figure 4. The main screen.
The major components of the main screen are:
(a) A media player which allows each of the video clips to be played by clicking each
of the clip buttons below the player.
(b) An inserted frame where the full captions of the title are presented. By clicking on
the S button beside each of the clip button, the corresponding scripts of the
particular clip will appear in the frame.
(c) The Storyline button that will bring out the Storyline page in the inserted frame.
(d) The Online Tools button will open another window where all the links to the
available online tools will appear.
(e) The Exercise button will present the exercise in the inserted frame.
(f) The Home button to go back to the home page where other materials can be
accessed.
The media player can present the video images and audio sounds of the
utterances that occur in the actual situations. Text-based materials normally use
oversimplified textual description and rely on learners’ imagination to recreate the
possible situations. This kind of recreation is often too demanding for the learners, if
possible at all. If we do not want to subject language learning too much to learners’
reasoning and imagination capabilities and risk the inevitable outcome of “Chinglish”
discussed above, the availability of video images and audio sounds that will bring
comprehensible input directly to the learners is requisite before they are able to grasp
most of the sound streams or written words and make sense out of them.
On a webpage, video clips can either be downloaded together with the page or be
called upon when a link to a clip is activated. The former case is convenient when the
video clips are rather small both in number and size, but when it comes to the large
amount of video needed in language learning, such a design is rather impractical. The
latter one will rely on the default player in a particular computer to play the video clip
and hence the outcome is hard to control and predict. The design of the clip buttons in
the present environment has the advantage of calling upon each of the video clips
when needed and the video is presented in both fixed location and size.
The inserted frame is used for the presentation of the related textual materials
including the storyline, the full captions and the exercises. Depending on the contents
and the language elements, true/false, multiple choice, blank-filling and
comprehension questions are provided wherever appropriate for the exercises. When
the text and exercise are rather lengthy, bookmarks can be used to locate each of the
corresponding text or exercise instantly. The buttons on top of each of these text pages
allow users to switch among them. Links to the online tools are presented in another
window when activated. This is to prevent users from jumping around the main screen
and the tool page and incidentally close either or both of them. Besides, it also allows
users to look at both the main screen and the tool windows at the same time by
adjusting the size and location of them.
The tools offered here are:
(a) Search engines: used for searching the related information available on the
Internet, useful tools when some terms cannot be found in dictionaries or
encyclopedia.
(b) Encyclopedia: useful tools for searching natural or social facts or events recorded
in human beings’ history.
(c) Concordancers: useful tools for teachers to pick up sample sentences for particular
words, phrases or collocations, also useful for advanced learners’ inductive
learning.
(d) Dictionaries: used for instant search of the meanings, pronunciations and usages
of words, phrases, idioms, slang.
(e) RSS Reader: a tool for reading frequently updated online news for long-term
language learning.
The Contents of the Materials
If such a teaching and learning environment is basically rather user-friendly,
what these authentic materials have to offer need to be scrutinized. From the outset,
each of the titles is a complete entity for the expression or presentation of the related
events, issues or topics in sequential structure. Such a sequential structure can be
called as the storyline of each of them. Taking Enigma as an example, the storyline
includes five major events:
(a) Tom, who broke Germany Uboat code, was summoned back to Bletchley Park
from Cambridge where he had been sent to for a recovery from a nervous
breakdown.
(b) The largest assembly of merchant shipping sent across the North Atlantic was
under serious threats from the Uboats.
(c) The missing female faculty and the investigation of the security around Bletchley
Park.
(d) Patching up the truth and figuring out the solution.
(e) The secrets and the traitor.
As we can see here, the first major event is to provide the background in which
the story proceeds. The second one is to add some strains to the story. The third one
comprises two possibly interrelated events to further dramatize the story. The fourth
one takes its audience into the maze to find out the clues. And finally all the puzzles
are solved in the last one. In fact, each of these major events contains several
sub-events. Taking the fourth major events as an example, it contains four sub or
minor events:
(a) Miss Wallace finds out what's A.D.U. and try to decipher the intercepts Claire
stole.
(b) Tom figures out how to use the contact signals from Uboats’ sightings of the
convoys to build up the new code menu and construct the new weather code.
(c) Claire leaves a message for Puck.
(d) Tom works out the menu but the attacks launched by the Uboats are also started.
These major and sub-events in the storyline actually create the macro and micro
contexts with rich background information and cultural values embedded in the
discourses. Consider the first five discourses in Enigma below:
(a) Tom: Claire?
Woman: Move up.
Claire: Thank you. Roast mules go topsy-turvy. Ten letters ending in T. I'm
hopeless at this.
Girl: Me too.
Tom: Somersault.
Macro context: Tom is summoned back from a rehab.
Micro context: He was on the train with two fellow soldiers.
Background information: Claire still occupies his heart so he recalls his encounter
with her on the train before.
(b) Soldier: Bletchley. It's a walk.
Tom: I know. I've been here before.
Operator: Hello? Yes. I'll try that extension for you. Please hold the line. I'm just
putting you through. Yes, you're through.
Macro context: Tom is summoned back to Bletchley from a rehab.
Micro context: He arrives in Bletchley Station.
Background information: There is no transportation from the station to Bletchley
Park. He has been here before.
Cultural values: Contribution and position; despite Tom is the key person to break
the German code system, he is not seen as much to his superiors because they
didn’t even send a car to pick him up.
(c) Soldier: Mr. Skynner?
Mr. Skynner: Come in.
Soldier: It's been a pleasure, sir.
Macro context: Tom is summoned back to Bletchley from a rehab.
Micro context: He arrives in Bletchley Park to see his superior first.
Background information: Mr. Skynner is his superior.
Cultural values: It’s polite to say something when two people are departing even
though the other party is not in the mood for this.
(d) Mr. Skynner: I never wanted you back. Logie says he needs you. Well... he's got
you. Conference in half an hour. And keep your mouth shut. You're only there for
show.
Macro context: Tom has been back to Bletchley.
Micro context: He is in his superior’s office.
Background information: His superior is rather hostile to him. There will be a
conference in half an hour and his superior doesn’t want him to say anything in the
conference.
Cultural values: Different personalities and personal values held by Mr. Skynner
and Tom.
(e) Guy: Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear. You do look bloody terrible.
We missed you, Tom.
Tom: I know why you want me back, Guy. You've lost the crown jewels, haven't
you? You've lost Shark.
Macro context: Tom has been back to Bletchley.
Micro context: He is in the garden where the concert that he met Claire again was
held.
Background information: Guy is the person who wanted Tom back. The code
system used by the German Uboats during World War II is called Shark. They
have lost it and have to work out a new one.
Cultural values: Interpersonal relationships; the dilemma of being friendly to
one’s fellow person and not to offend his superior and being really care about
someone or simply need to use him.
As discussed above, the author has made distinctions among background
information, cultural values, and contextual information, such distinctions can be
more clearly seen via the exemplification via these discourses. Obviously, it is far
from being appropriate to simply put all these facts, information, and values under the
term “culture.” Another important thing is that although there are commonly held
realizations or interpretations toward these facts, information, and values, there are
individual differences in a given society. As a result, when it comes to meaning
references, there are commonly shared ones and there are the nuances.
The documentaries also have sequential structures. Taking War in Iraq as an
example, it contains the following major topical issues:
(a) Background of the Iraq War
(b) Plans and deployment
(c) Strategic considerations
(d) The actual war
Again, the first major topical issue provides the background of the war. The
second one addresses the war plan. The third one describes the strategies. And the last
one brings its audience into the actual war. And again, each of these topical issues
contains several sub topical issues; to save space, we will not go into the details here.
The major differences between a film and a documentary are:
(a) A film is organized by a sequence of events and a documentary by topical issues.
(b) A film has more references to interpersonal values and a documentary has more to
natural or social facts.
The Language in the Materials
As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, language is usually considered as a
system which includes several subsystems such as the sound system, the lexical
system, the grammar system, and the discourse system. Language teaching is to build
up such a system in learners’ minds from bits and pieces. Phonics or phonetic
alphabets are used for building up the sound system; vocabulary lists and made-up
sentences for the lexical system; sentence patterns for the grammar system; and
discourse patterns for the discourse system. This is completely at odds with the way
language is developed in every single human being and in natural settings. We learn
our language from the contents of the world and gradually relate those contents to
sounds and then learn to use written symbols to represent those sounds and meanings.
This is commonly shared experience but is often made obscure because so long as
education is concerned it is conducted via written words. It is so taken for granted that
our mother tongue classes in our primary schools are also conducted via textbooks
using borrowed and created symbols unknown to most of us (Wu, 2004).
The core of any language is not the sounds or written symbols themselves, it is
what they refer to and they refer to the world; in other words, it is the contents of the
world that make language meaningful and learnable. It is far more efficient to learn a
language from its contents and then gradually go down to its linguistic elements for
more accurate expression than the other way around. This is might not be easily seen,
but it will be easier using the discourses taken from the three titles used here to
illustrate.
(a) Tom: Miss Wallace?
Miss Wallace: Mr. Jericho. When did you get back?
Tom: Just today. How... How are you?
Miss Wallace: How am I?
Tom: Yeah, all right. How is she?
Miss Wallace: She's... She's Claire.
Tom: Well, will you tell her?
Miss Wallace: If I see her. She hasn't been sleeping at home the last two nights.
Sorry.
“Miss Wallace?” refers to the housemate of Claire, yet the intonation also shows
that Tom is not quite sure she is the right person. Miss Wallace, on the other hand,
recognizes Tom instantly and knows that he was away for a while but she does not
know when he came back. Tom approaches Miss Wallace because he cares about
Claire so “How…” means “How is Claire?” Since it is not polite socially, “How
are you?” actually come out his mouth. Miss Wallace notices that and says “How
am I?” to mean that “You are not asking about me, you are asking about Claire,
right?” Tom does not admit that first but admits it then. Miss Wallace doesn’t
really know where and how is Claire now so she comes out with an unusual
answer. Tom asks her to tell Claire about his coming back and Miss Wallace tells
him what she knows about the status about Claire at the moment.
(b) Tom: Did she ever say anything about me?
Miss Wallace: She must like you. The way she talks about the others.
Tom: A bus load, you said?
Miss Wallace: The Romilly effect. One look, and they're Romillied.
Tom wants to know how Claire really thinks about him from Miss Wallace and
she thinks Claire must like him because the way she talks about Tom is different
from that about others. Tom wants to make sure that there are a lot of people who
like Claire because she once told him that she could “fill a bus with men who are
worried about Claire Romilly...” Miss Wallace confirms that by telling him why
and she actually invents a word “Romillied” for her sense of the effect.
(c) Tom: Mary Jane Hawkins.
Puck: The oracle has spoken.
Tom: They changed the weather code, but not the short signal code book. It's our
way back into Shark, so long as the Uboats find our convoy. Don't you see? It's
our convoy. We know what the Uboats are sending. It's the crib we've been
looking for.
Tom once used the name Mary Jane Hawkins on a gravestone as a metaphor to
explain to Miss Wallace what a crib is; henceforth they say the name whenever
they are able to break the enciphered codes. Tom obviously finds out the solution.
And to Puck, Tom usually does not talk much but when he does there must be
something so he is like an oracle to him. Tom further explains how they can work
out the crib to decipher German’s new codebook.
(d) Savannah, Georgia, the belle of the south.
A city rich with history, gracious hospitality, and magnificent architecture.
But could all of this be wiped out in a flash?
The answer may be yes!
The discourse taken from Best Kept Secrets—Military describes the facts about
Savanna and how people think about it. It then refers to the fact that such a nice
city faces the threat from a lost nuclear bomb in the nearby water.
(e) The September 11 attack on America made renewed hostilities with Iraq inevitable
in the eyes of the Bush administration.
Most Americans felt a vulnerability to attack they had not sensed since the dark
days of the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962.
American President George Bush vowed he would not allow another attack, even
if it meant going to war.
This discourse taken from War in Iraq talks about the September 11 terrorists’
attack and how the Bush administration looks at it. It then talks about the same
fear people once sensed in another event in 1962. Under such circumstances, the
President has to show his determination.
We can see that the narratives taken from documentaries are more
straightforward and contain references mainly to the facts and events in the world and
how people look at them. We have to understand what Savannah, Georgia, the belle of
the south, a flash, the September 11 attack, the Bush administration, the Cuban
Missile crises to make sense out of them. There is a whole story behind each of these
facts and events. It is the degrees to which one understand these facts that decide the
degrees of comprehension toward these narratives. Words are not simply as they
appear; they refer to a lot of things that make a lot of sense to the native speakers of
the language.
The discourses from the film show they are highly related to the contexts,
personal values, feelings and judgments and interpersonal relationships; there are also
references to facts and events, but not as intensive as those from the documentaries.
The utterances in the film are highly context-dependent and have much to do with the
values, feelings and judgments of the interlocutors given their background knowledge.
The words in these utterances go further beyond their surface meanings and their
meanings are highly related to the interlocutors as entities in the target language’s
society. The author’s own definition of language is: “Language, in terms of meaning
generation and expression, occurs as the outcome of dynamic interactions between
one’s intellectual/cognitive abilities (and emotional/affective status) and the
surrounding physical and social environments” (Wu, 1998). The intellectual/cognitive
abilities and emotional/affective status refer to the values, feelings and judgments the
interlocutors possess and actually apply; the surrounding physical and social
environments, on the other hand, refer to the related facts and events realized by them.
If the utterances in a language are the outcome of such dynamic functions among
the related variables as evidenced in the discourses above and the meanings of the
words used go further beyond the surface meanings, they need to be exemplified in a
meaningful interrelated entity rather than segmented bits and pieces in order to reach
true comprehension of them. Setting the focus of language teaching and learning on
the phonetic symbols, the alphabets, the words, the sentence patterns and the
discourse patterns simply misses the point. Although the invention of written words
plays an important role for the development of a particular language and its
civilization, it has more to do with a total different issue that human’s memory span is
limited in real-time processing of oral sounds and written words help ease the
limitation (see e.g. Wu, 2004). Most of the several thousand languages in the present
world do not have a written form and are still alive and developing.
Unlike other subjects such as physics, chemistry, geometry, or other fields of
study in natural science or social science which have objective contents to work on,
language is embedded in human beings’ life, in human beings’ experience of the
world. It is not an entity in itself. It is a way human beings’ use for communication in
life and for the illustration of facts and events in their living experience. Different
group of people may use different ways, i.e. different languages, for the
communication and illustration, but they all refer to similar living experience in the
same world. This is why a language is learnable to speakers of other languages and
that is why the focus of language teaching and learning should be on the contents of
life in the world.
The Application of the Theme and Content-based Materials and the Multimedia
Environment in English Teaching and Learning
For using theme and content-based authentic materials in language teaching and
learning, several factors or issues need to be considered. First of all, the learner’s age
group is an important factor for the selection of materials because their mental
capabilities and living experience are related to their age. Cartoons and films of the
children and family category might be a good choice for younger learners. Stories are
interesting but without the help of pictures or videos students will not be able make
sense out of the sound streams because they are still not familiar with what they refer
to. Songs with supporting Flash files such as those produced by Little Fox can also be
organized into a drama to create interesting context for them. The idea here is that
they need to rely on the pictures or videos to understand the contents and the
corresponding audio sounds to gradually build up their sense of what these sounds
refer to. Once they are able to make sense out of the sound streams, it is only a minor
step to build up the letter sound relationships.
As their age increases, their ego will also gradually develop and their attention
will be paid to the outside world. Documentaries about the simple facts of the world
can be gradually added. The best way is that the content materials of each of the
subjects can go side by side in both their mother tongue and the target language so
that a true bilingual education can be put into effect. Senior high school and college
students have already selected their own fields of study, it is better that the language
materials accord with their interests of study.
The availability of the computers and broadcast system is another important
issue. Complaints from primary and junior high school teachers are frequently heard.
It is a pity that Taiwan has become the major supplier of the computers to the whole
world but little efforts have been made in this regard. If language teaching wants to be
successful, multimedia presentation of authentic materials is requisite, especially in
the beginning stage when learners are unable to make sense out of sound streams and
written words.
Teachers’ capability in handling both the materials and the facilities is also worth
mentioning. Unlike ready-made textbooks, authentic materials require the teacher to
go through them and do some basic editing before they can be used in the classroom.
Thanks to the development of many useful multimedia tools available for PC users,
such basic editing tasks can be learned and performed in just a few days. The
multimedia environment presented in this paper can be used as a module for novice
users of the computer in the English classroom.
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