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IN THE past decade or so, the teaching of foreign languages has shifted to a new paradigm: its principal goal now is to achieve an understanding of the nature of communication and the development of communicative proficiency. Instructors thus constantly face the challenge of finding authentic and contemporary teaching materials for their programs. International television materials meet this need, and most in the profession agree that they offer a choice tool for the teaching and learning of foreign languages and cultures. In 1985, during a sabbatical year in Paris, I developed a project for a French TV magazine that would, I hoped, serve teachers of French at the secondary and university levels. It would consist of sixty minutes of news and features on French life. It could be transmitted via satellite so as to fulfill the following objectives: (1) to keep viewers on the North American continent abreast of current events and issues in France and the francophone world, (2) to make these video materials available at minimal charge (no charge in the developmental phase) to the widest possible audience, and (3) to present these news features in a format versatile enough to accommodate several levels of use in the classroom: from viewing as a regular “TV show” to systematic pedagogical exploitation. After a few months of negotiations, France-TV Magazine, involving the collaboration of the Antenne 2 TV network, Médiane Films (in Paris), and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), was inaugurated in November 1985.
In the first year of implementation, with the assistance of Victor Aulestia, our director of Instructional Media Resources, we uplinked seven one-hour programs on French social, political, economic, and cultural events to a United States domestic satellite (Westar IV), whose “footprint” covers the whole North American continent. This television magazine, aimed primarily at French language instruction and French studies programs in high schools, colleges, and universities, is unrestricted and can be received by any institution, organization, or even any private home equipped with a satellite receiving dish. With regard to copyrights, we found it convenient to adopt existing guidelines for off-air recording of broadcast programming for educational purposes. Viewers were authorized to record the program and to retain it up to forty-five calendar days after the date of recording and also to make copies to meet the legitimate needs of teachers. At the end of the first year, a UMBC survey established that at least seventy colleges and universities had been receiving and recording the program.
The continued commitment of Antenne 2, a grant from the French Ministry of External Relations, and UMBC's renewed support enabled us to carry this pilot program into 1986–87. In its second year, the French satellite project grew by leaps and bounds. A second survey indicated that approximately three hundred schools, colleges, and universities were receiving the program in spring 1987. Moreover, a number of educational channels and cable companies had sought the authorization to record the program for retransmission in their localities. Antenne 2 provides us with a program that has been cleared of many copyright restrictions, and it has delegated to UMBC discretionary authority over the distribution of the program in the United States. Our policy has been to grant unrestricted and unlimited retransmission privileges to educational channels and cable companies.
Two comprehensive surveys and abundant correspondence received from users have highlighted the following aspects of the project:
By the end of the second year, we had every indication that the satellite delivery of authentic video materials had the potential for becoming a powerful teaching and learning support system for language teachers across the continent.
Having become aware of the great potential of this experiment, we wished to build on it so as to create a first-generation model of satellite-assisted instruction. While some components were already well developed, tested, and fully operational, others needed further refinement and still others were yet to be created. The development of such an instructional model led to the search for a configuration involving the TV magazine, a pedagogical support, a mode of delivery for the ancillary materials, and users' rights.
The magazine is composed of authentic materials from the thirty-day archive of the network's news department; most of the features have been aired in regular newscasts during the preceding month. We have therefore a plentiful and ideal source of topics for a sixty-minute magazine. The footage is recut and reedited in order to build and summarize news stories that may have been reported through several broadcasts and to adapt them for a nonnative audience requiring enhanced contextualization and clearer exposition. No extraneous material is added— except for a few titles or an occasional chart or other graphic.
The purpose of the project and its intended audience demanded that we concentrate on both content and format. It seemed evident to us that news and current events provided choice materials nor only because they would arouse curiosity and have maximal impact but, just as important, because they covered many topics already familiar to North American viewers (international news, hostage situations, drug scene, etc.). We felt the recognition factor would put comprehension more within reach.
Along with the question of what materials we would put on the air came the question of format. A survey of our audience indicated a wide consensus favoring a variety of segments one to fifteen minutes long. Our current program structure looks something like this: the initial ten-to-twelve-minute segment contains our dossier on the major news of the month; it is followed by “general news,” consisting of two-to-eight-minute segments on other major events, and then shorter reports selected from the fare of exhibits, literary prizes, cinema, popular songs, or sports events—that is, several cultural “markers” for the month. The final segment can be as short as one minute and no more than a “wink,” be it on election posters or summer fashions.
As viewers pointed out, the news magazine would be even more useful if the retention period of the recording exceeded the standard forty-five days and if ancillary materials accompanied the program. Negotiations pertaining to these points were conducted with Antenne 2 and Médiane Films during spring 1987 and reached very successful outcomes. The resulting “new contract” includes two important features. First, it adopts an exceptionally liberal approach to copyrights. Antenne 2 and Médiane Films have agreed to extend the authorization to use France-TV Magazine well beyond the forty-five-day rule. Under the new policy, users are permitted to record, make copies, and retain programs for a full year following the last telecast of each academic year. For example, all programs recorded from September 1987 to May 1988 can be retained, copied, and used freely until 31 May 1989. After 31 May 1989, however, the use of these programs would be an infringement of copyright laws. All viewers will thus have the use of the programs for no fewer than twelve months and up to twenty months. These latest “fair-use” guidelines apply to schools, cable operators, and public TV stations. They will be widely advertised, and all institutions will receive formal written notification of this policy.
Second, the new contract gives UMBC permission to create and disseminate ancillary materials based on France-TV Magazine . Antenne 2 and Médiane Films have also issued the authorization to develop, disseminate, and transmit ancillary materials based on their TV magazine. They only expect to receive proper credit for the production of the program. The pedagogical materials themselves will be developed by a team at UMBC and will be released with no restrictions for use in regular teaching activities. Users will be able to copy, reproduce, and edit these materials as they please. UMBC's only request will also be a line acknowledging their source.
These major breakthroughs in our negotiations with Antenne 2 and Médiane Films provided an extraordinary opportunity to evolve and implement a new kind of instructional system. The concept was simple enough: video and ancillary materials would be made available at the same time. We deemed that a remote bulletin board system (RBBS) would make this plan directly feasible. As many readers will know, one needs a computer with a modem (or a remote terminal) and the RBBS's telephone number in order to access its service. Our bulletin board, created for this single purpose, would work on the same principle as the best-known bulletin boards in the United States, the Source and CompuServe, and, in France, the Minitel. Once a phone connection is made, users then receive instructions and start selecting various options listed on program menus. An initial option, for example, is between a regular fare of bulletins and various announcements and messages left by other users. Regarding the bulletins, a few files may be devoted to general information, but most would be filled with instructional materials based on the current telecast. Furthermore, an electronic bulletin board also allows users to download files and save them to disk in order to produce a hard copy with their own printers.
Thanks to a grant awarded in fall 1987 by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, we can now begin developing such a large-scale project. Its three major components are the RBBS, the instructional materials, and contact with users.
The RBBS . A particularly exciting part of the plan, this bulletin board will open up a basic model of satellite-assisted instruction in foreign languages. The RBBS will fulfill several functions and provide (1) ongoing programming information about contents of past and upcoming transmissions; (2) electronic mail, enabling users to leave messages, quickly exchange ideas on video pedagogy, and organize “private” or “public” conferences on issues of common interest; and (3) electronic delivery of instructional materials prepared for each broadcast. Users will be able to retrieve these files from their terminal and print them at their workstation. After some further selection or some editing, these materials can be reproduced on the school ditto machine or copier.
Instructional materials . This component entails the development of background information on program topics and of teaching materials that can be used in conjunction with specific segments of the video. The intent is to design a full line of materials that will offer a continuum from listening-comprehension exercises through oral and written activities to cultural simulations. We obviously do not wish to emulate standard language-instruction manuals that present materials sequentially. Our objectives and timetables require a significant departure from traditional practices. Users should in fact be cognizant of the following framework:
The general pattern of pedagogical activities, moving from comprehension to practice and, finally, to interpretation appears below. It is not our intention to apply such a pattern mechanically to every single module of video, but we propose to use it selectively and appropriately to each context. The particular content of a given news report or feature will direct the selection of activities to accompany that video segment. Here is the pattern:
At the time of each broadcast, users will be provided not only with a videotape of fresh news, current events, and features of French life but also with corresponding ancillary materials, which will be directly transportable to the classroom and easily integrated into appropriate parts of their courses. Moreover, the TV magazine and its instructional materials should constitute an attractive package for independent study.
Contact with users . Several hundred distant users generate an enormous need for information and communication of one kind or another: reception and technical information for receiving dish, inquiries, requests, management of ancillary materials and RBBS, and so on. It will be essential to build an efficient and effective network of viewers/users so as to make the system responsive and entirely dependable.
The design of such an overall structure clearly assumes that computers and modems are more or less universally available in the educational setting. This assumption may prove to be slightly ahead of its time, but it certainly anticipates tomorrow's reality.
During the next two years, we will be field-testing a first-generation model of satellite-assisted instruction in French language and culture. Through this project, we will be able to evaluate several cutting-edge technologies in foreign language teaching and learning. We will also assess the cost-effectiveness, reliability, and efficacy of a system characterized by the complexity of the coordination among all its constituent parts and by an overall design of global scale.
We anticipate that such an enterprise will be truly challenging. Our principal motivation for undertaking it is the belief that the marriage of satellite TV and telematics—ground transmission of data through a terminal—will prove a powerful and cost-effective instrument for the revitalization of language studies in the United States.
Finally, let us underscore that this model of distance education is not designed to take the place of a local teacher. Quite to the contrary, all the activities and learning strategies are centered and dependent on a teacher who will carry them out. Moreover, in our view, language learning is hardly conceivable in the absence of genuine human interaction. The principal purpose of this incipient instructional model is to provide choice resources to a constituency with quite particular needs and a powerful support system to the language profession in a country where physical and concomitant psychological insularity have long been major obstacles to the teaching and learning of foreign languages and cultures.
The author is Director of the Satellite Development Project in French Language and Culture and former Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
© 1988 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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