Article Critique"A Classroom Investigation: Can Video Improve Intermediate-Level French Language Student's Ability to Learn About a Foreign Culture?"

I plan to explore the impact of media in successful classroom instruction. I want to study the use of video, photographs, music, internet websites, and other media formats in providing an engaging learning experience for students. The use of media in a classroom setting should increase the retention rate of the material taught, insight enthusiasm from students about the material being taught, and prove to be a valuable way for students to learn necessary material.

A study from The Modern Language Journal entitled "A Classroom Investigation: Can Video Improve Intermediate-Level French Language Student's Ability to Learn About A Foreign Culture?" provides important support that media is effective in classroom instruction. The study revolved around French language learners and what happened to their learning when their instruction had a video component to it. Authors Carol Herron, Cathleen Corrie, Sebastien Durbreil, and Steven P. Cole advocate for the use of video in the classroom "Not only can a video component build listening comprehension skills as shown in previous research (Rubin, 1990: Secules et al., 1992), but the use of video tapes can also be effective for building cultural knowledge" (2002, p. 49). The evidence and findings of this study supports my literature review by promoting the use of media in effective classroom teaching.

There has been conflicting theories about use of video and its impact on effective teaching and on improved learning by students. The study by Herron, Corrie, Durbreil, and Cole describes one school of thought about the use of multimedia, "In particular, some scholars praise multimedia technology for its ability to present students with long stretches of oral discourse embedded in a rich visual context" and compares it to another school of thought, "In spite of the proliferation of authentic audiovisual materials, other researchers question their effectiveness and argue that they might in fact not foster cultural acquisition" (Herron et al., 2002, p. 37). The goal of this study was to prove which school of thought was accurate in their perception of the use of video in instruction and its effectiveness.

The study hypothesizes that the use of video in a foreign language classroom will aid student's growth of learning a different culture (Herron et al., 2002). Other questions addressed by the researchers revolving around the type of video used in the study led to other hypotheses by the researchers. The hypotheses dealt with theories about the change of replacing narrative video with more journalistic, narrative videos. Researchers used a journalistic video instead of a narrative video which had been the norm in previous years for the classes in the study.

The study included fifty-one college students at a private American university who were enrolled in French language courses (Herron et al., 2002). The fifty-one college students were broken up into four sections of a fifteen week course, which was a third semester course, FR201, in the French program (Herron et al, 2002). There was no difference in the years of instruction between these four groups of students. The study itself was an experimental study where four groups were randomly assigned and then compared. Researchers used a pretest and posttest to measure the results of their hypothesis.

All students in the four sections took a multiple choice pretest before watching the videos targeted for study (Herron et al., 2002). A posttest was used at the end of the semester using the same questions after students had watched the targeted videos (Herron et al., 2002). The pretests and posttests were based on cultural information in the videos (Herron et al., 2002). The study sought to identify the amount of cultural information each student retained as a result of the videos (Herron et al., 2002). Researchers also used a survey about culture that was given to each student, which sought to identify student's perceptions and whether or not they had previous experiences with the French language or had been to France (Herron et al., 2002). In analyzing the results of the pretests and posttests, researchers used a correlative approach to support the reliability of the pretests and posttests. Researchers found that the reliability of the study to be 90%; students who did well on the pretest did well on the posttest (Herron et al., 2002). The reliability was shown in the multiple choice portion of the test as well as the short answer and recall portion of the tests (Herron et al., 2002).

Many steps were taken to ensure the validity of the study when the study was being implemented. When the participating teachers gave the pretests and posttests they indicated that those tests did not count as a grade (Herron et al., 2002). To throw off any indication of the purpose of the testing, the test itself comprised of 37 questions with 7 questions that were irrelevant to the study to avoid student anticipation about the study (Herron et al., 2002). The pretests and posttests included information that was all found in the videos watched by all students so that all students. The test measured what the researchers had set out to measure. When the posttests were given, students were expected to rely on information that they had seen in the videos and not what they had experienced in their own life or generalizations about the culture that could be guessed from prior knowledge.

I believe that this study will prove to be invaluable to me in my literature review. The fact that the researchers looked at the different debates surrounding the use of video and came to the conclusion that video helped the learning process supports my theory. Many of the citations in the study proved the same theory and will be of use to me in the future.