Video-Viewing Tasks for Language Teacher Education

http://rel.sagepub.com/RELC Journal

http://rel.sagepub.com/content/33/1/122The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/003368820203300107

2002 33: 122RELC JournalMarilyn Lewis and He Anping

Video-Viewing Tasks for Language Teacher Education

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:RELC JournalAdditional services and information for

http://rel.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://rel.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://rel.sagepub.com/content/33/1/122.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- Jun 1, 2002Version of Record >>

at UNIV OF DELAWARE LIB on October 7, 2014rel.sagepub.comDownloaded from at UNIV OF DELAWARE LIB on October 7, 2014rel.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://rel.sagepub.com/

http://rel.sagepub.com/content/33/1/122

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://rel.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://rel.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://rel.sagepub.com/content/33/1/122.refs.html

http://rel.sagepub.com/content/33/1/122.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml



122

VIDEO-VIEWING TASKS FOR LANGUAGETEACHER EDUCATION

MARILYN LEWIS

Department of Applied Language Studies and LinguisticsUniversity of Auckland

HE ANPING

South China Normal University

Abstract

Two teacher educators experimented with the design of video-viewingtasks for language teachers. These were used and evaluated withteachers on in-service courses in Shenzhen, China. Drawing on currenttheories of language analysis and of task design for teacher educationthey developed, used and evaluated a series of tasks with differentgroups of teachers in China. They found that the action research cycleof task development, presentation and evaluation led to more focussedand therefore more useful activities. Finally they draw a number ofconclusions about the use of authentic classroom data to guideteachers, thinking while viewing, including details of task design

Introduction

The use of video data from language classrooms for teacher educationis increasingly popular with the rapid development of multi-media teachingequipment. Yet, decisions have to be made about appropriate tasks for theteachers before, while and after viewing. What tasks lead to what kind ofthinking and learning? Joint research between two language teachereducators, one in China and the other in New Zealand, develops and evaluatestasks for teachers based on classroom video data collected in China. The

two objectives of the present research are:

1. to experiment with designing video-viewing tasks at increasing levelsof complexity

2. to evaluate the tasks’ effectiveness in terms of teachers’ written

responses.

at UNIV OF DELAWARE LIB on October 7, 2014rel.sagepub.comDownloaded from


123

Before going into the detail of the research, a literature review was madeon two issues of video data observation: how to analyze classroom data andhow to design video-viewing tasks based on the analysis.

Classroom data analysis

An analysis of videoed classroom data has to concentrate on features thatare observable. Discourse analysts suggest a number of possibilities forfocussing attention during classroom observation. Coulthard and Brazil (1992)list five categories of exchange between teacher and students: teacher eliciting,teacher directing, teacher informing, pupil eliciting and pupil informing. Thistype of categorizing is relatively easy for teachers to note quantitatively byticking columns on pre-organized timesheets while viewing video data.

Pennington (1999) suggests a four-level frame analysis which consists oflesson, lesson-support, commentary and institutional support. As examplesof the lesson frame she lists whole class examples, definition and examples,IRF (initiation, response, feedback) sequence, and explicating a readingpassage. Lesson support includes students asking for help, physical structuringfor the task (making sure the seating arrangement allows everyone to see),and disciplining. The commentary frame produces examples such as pre-lesson real talk unrelated to the lesson and disruptive student talk. [The fourthlevel, the institutional- support frame, refers to anything beyond the specificlesson, such as an announcement from the school principal, and is not relevantto the observation of the present study.]

A third possible model for classroom observation is the FOCUS model(Foci for observing communication used in settings) suggested by Fanselow(1977) and revisited by Tsui (1995). This model stresses the importance ofsetting and context in a description of classroom interaction and considersfive characteristics of communication named source, medium, use, content,and pedagogical purpose. The first four aspects can be detected by viewing avideo, while the last, pedagogical purpose, can be interpreted on the basis ofthe other four.

A more abstract theme-based approach is put forward by van Lier (1996:128) who examines the authenticity of exchanges and tasks. He definesauthenticity in terms of &dquo;a personal process of engagement’ rather than as alabel for a particular sample of language whether from the textbook or the



124

teacher’s language.&dquo; It is difficult, but not impossible, to detect a student’spersonal engagement by watching video data because, according to van Lier’sdefinition, what counts is not measured by analyzing the language in isolationbut rather by an examination of the whole interaction. Viewing video data islikely to give more information about authenticity than reading a writtentranscript but less than would be available to the observer in the classroom.

A further basis for analysis is comes from Holliday ( 1997), who, in hisstudy of six lessons in China and India, allows the observation notes to suggestthe data. This results in four headings: the place of text, accuracy and fluency,lecturer authority and control, and cultural continuity. By ’text’ he meanseither the textbook, the blackboard, students’ writing, teachers’ writtencomments, audio recordings, teacher or student speech, all of which can bereflected in video data and this demonstrate the teaching process.

Finally a three-dimensional option (text, discursive practices and socialpractices) is suggested by Breen (1998) to the language classroom. The text ofthe lesson is everything that is available by way of data, from spoken and writtenlanguage to facial expressions. The second dimension, discursive practices, isthe way the texts are produced, interpreted and combined both by teachers andlearners and by other contributors to the lesson, such as textbook writers. Thethird dimension, social practices, is the wider institutional and cultural practicesincluding both the apparently trivial, such as lesson length and the arrangementof the furniture, and the more subtle teacher-student relationships, some ofwhich cannot be detected in video-viewing.

Task design for video observation

The first decision in the development of video-based tasks for studentteachers is what model of teacher development they should be based on.Analysing and evaluating videos of &dquo;expert&dquo; teachers seems to fit Wallace’s(1991) craft model of professional development, in which teachers learn froma master practitioner .

Then the developers can plan appropriate activities for each stage in theviewing process, taking into account what types of thinking they want topromote.

Lubelska and Matthews (1997) designed and categorized tasks accordingto whether they are done before, while or after viewing. The ’before’ tasks



125

recall viewers’ existing experience and knowledge, clarify terminology andcreate a common understanding of whichever topic is focussed on. As anexample, they might be asked to agree or disagree with a list of statementsand give their reasons, or to predict the sort of language that is likely to beused in a lesson on a particular topic. ’while viewing’ tasks examine focusand purpose. for example, teachers might check items off a list they havealready predicted. After the viewing teachers are encouraged to discuss thelessons through prompts supplied by the lecturer before moving on to applyingtheir insights to planning. Wajnryb (1992) also has tasks for each of the threephases, before, during and after the lesson. The seven bases of her collectionare the learner, language, learning, the lesson, teaching skills and strategies,classroom management, materials and resources.

The next stage is to design and sequence the tasks. Parrott (1993) classifiesand defines his tasks in terms of their aim, their focus (the input) and theiractivity (the way participants interact with the stimulus). Tanner and Green(1998) base theirs around a reflective approach and offer a range of foci (givinginstructions, eliciting and so on). Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al. 1956 inBiggs and Telfer, 1987) sets out six levels: knowledge reproduction,demonstrating understanding, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

The present study draws on the above models or frames in several ways.Fanselow’s (1997) FOCUS model and Coulthard and Brazil’s ( 1992) fivecategories of classroom exchange helped us identify different types of speechacts in teacher-student interaction in the video.

When designing viewing tasks we selected ’expert’ teachers as in

Wallace’s craft model (1991), and made the tasks increasingly complexfollowing Bloom’s taxonomy. The tasks were sequenced according to

Lubelska and Matthews’ (1997) three staging procedures. We then noteddifferences in responses to different types of task, as measured by trainees’written responses.

The Study

The planning stage

The study developed as a collaborative project between colleagues in twoinstitutions, the Institute of Language Teaching and Learning at the Universityof Auckland and the Foreign Languages Department at the South China



126

Normal University, mainly by e-mail but with two face-to- face discussions.Some steps of the study lent themselves to a joint approach such as an initialreading of one script from a 40-minute lesson to see what useful data it offered.The New Zealand researcher, who had easier access to sources of reading,wrote the literature review, both of us designed the tasks and the researcherin China carried out the video observation activities. We then worked on the

teachers’ responses through exchange of video transcripts through e-mails.

The data comes from a teacher education programme carried out in

Shenzhen, China from March to December 1998. More than 100 in- service

English teachers from middle schools in Shenzhen, with at least two years’teaching experience, attended part-time graduates courses given by the teachereducators of South China Normal University as part of their ’ContinuingEducation’, The Chinese researcher of the present study taught them a courseon ’Syllabus design, course-book evaluation and classroom teaching’ withthe focus on communicative approaches to English teaching, such as settingreal/meaningful contexts for students, using information gap tasks andauthentic language, The in-service teachers were divided into three classesand came to the course at different times of the year. In each of the three

phases of the program, the in-service teachers were given the same lectures,watched the same video and were assigned to read the books or articles.

The video data

The video-clips were chosen from an extensive 180,000-word Corpusof English Classroom Interaction’ which includes four types classroomcontexts:

1. 35 episodes of English classes made by six native English speakingteachers demonstrating communicative language teaching techniques(video tapes provided by the British Council of Culture to GuangdongForeign Languages Institute, China, 1984).

2. 10 periods of ’Fine quality classes’ made by ten first prize winnersin the 1997 National competition for ’Fine quality English Classes inJunior middle schools of China (video tapes published by The PeopleEducation Press, China. 1997).

3. 10 ’Ordinary classes’ made by ten English teachers (not winners) indifferent middle schools of Guangdong Province (video tapes



127

provided by the People’s Education Committee of GuangdongProvince, China, 1997).

4 10 ’Pre-service teachers’ classes’ made by ten student teachers in theForeign Languages Department of South China Normal University whichwere filmed during their teaching practice in the middle schools ofGuangzhou.

Each set of data has three versions: video, sound recording and writtentranscription. All of these were used to do a pre-analysis of the classroom dataand to design viewing tasks but the in-service teachers watching the videos didnot have access to the transcription.

Three stages of task development

Stage 1: During this pre-study phase the observation tasks were developedand used with Class I. Results were noted and analyzed in threeways: the trainees’ written responses, the Chinese researcher-

lecturer’s reflection on the process and the product, and the NewZealand researcher’s response to these first two sources. From here

on the project moved cyclically.

Stage 2: This was the phase of revising the pre-viewing and while- viewingtasks. New tasks were agreed on through e-mail correspondence,tried by the researcher-lecturer with Class 2 and then evaluated again.

Stage 3: This was the phase of further development of post-viewing tasks.These were tried in Class 3 and results analyzed again by the tworesearchers.

Results of Task Design and Evaluation

Tasks for Class I

In stage 1, the trainees of Class 1 observed one period of ’fine quality class’for a traditional viewing task with the following instructions:

Take notes on what went well in the classroom while watching the videoand after the viewing, say how particular principles of communicative teachingwere illustrated.



128

In terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, this task represented three levels:reproducing knowledge, demonstrating understanding and evaluation.However, there were very few, if any, critical comments from the trainees.

They could rewrite some of the five principles of communicative teachingthat had been presented in class but failed to relate them to the actual data inthe videotape. For example, after viewing a class of listening skills training,a trainee wrote (in his original words):

The class belongs to communicative approach. The teacherpresents real situation to the students to talk about their leisuretime at university .The process is active. Every student involvedin the activity .Also, the language forms are concerned about. Theteacher is only an organizer in the class.&dquo;

Many trainees just wrote a few words such as ’very interesting, impressive,successful, students are active, etc. which was regarded by the researcher-lecturer as too simple and broad.

Tasks for Class 2

The results of the first stage led to the development of a more structuredguide for the trainees of Class 2. New tasks were planned with the followingchanges.

Pre-analysis of classroom data. The research-lecturer analyzedthe video data in more detail than before and prepared the traineesbetter for the observation by giving some instruction in discourseanalysis, including identifying pedagogical purpose. Shedemonstrated a detailed analysis of several episodes of the videoedclass using Coulthard and Brazil’s (1992) exchange model inclassroom interaction discourse and Fanselow’s five dimensional

approach (1977). This was to find out the thread running throughteaching procedures and activities.

A pilot study of teacher’s talk. The videoed teachers’ verbal andnon- verbal behavior was further classified into directing,informing, eliciting, evaluating and correcting. Attention was alsopaid to the source of the language which was identified as beingeither from the text book or not, in order to demonstrate, in a



129

small way, the authenticity aspect of classroom exchanges. Inorder to lead to a closer observation of the data, more detailedtasks were developed for the trainees of Class 2. They where givenobservation sheets with columns as follows:

What taught? How is it taught?’

e.g. e.g.

language forms Correctingnotions Giving feedbackfunctions

The trainees were thus instructed in the process of analysis andfamiliarized with some technical terms such as eliciting, cueing, guidedcorrecting, broken sentences, etc. They tried to identify each type of theteacher’s speech act by doing a pilot study on one episode together withthe lecturer. After viewing one episode of a class taught by a native Englishspeaking teacher, the lecturer guided the trainees to fill in the form usingsimple notes in answer to questions in English such as :

What are the students learning just now- a topic, a notion or afunction?

What language forms are actually being practised?How did the teacher make them learn?How did the teacher put them into as real as possible a situation?How were the information gap tasks created?How are the students encouraged to speak English?How does the teacher respond to the students’ errors?

While-viewing stage.-After this pilot study in class, the traineesdid individual work of their own. The lecturer paused the videoseveral times at the end of each episode to give them time to takenotes and repeated the episode as often as necessary .The traineesfilled in the form in very simple notes, and after that wroteindividual paragraphs commenting on the application of the fivecommunicative principles in the video data,

Result evaluation. Clearer instructions and task design given toClass 2 meant an improvement in the quantity and quality of theirnotes and comments. All of the 39 observation reports collected



130

from Class 2 were written with more substantial notes and

meaningful comments than those in Class 1, as is shown by thefollowing two observation reports in Class 2.

Report 1:

General Comment (written after viewing)

I was deeply impressed by the teacher’s eliciting of teaching, F’irstthe teacher provided a vivid character-Daniel’s twin brother.So that everyone was interested and active in guessing his outappearance. It put the students into communicate context. Duringthe teaching, the teacher also showed her interest, and alwaysguided the students to speak out by making some gestures andhints. In the same time, some language forms were used, suchas, look like, as...as, taller than, He’s probably a copy of ... In

class the students did most communicate activities while theteacher just played the role of a participater.



131

Report 2:

Comments:

I am deeply impressed by the teacher’s teaching skills of elicitingthe students. First, she puts the students in communicative context

by asking such questions as &dquo;What’s he like ? &dquo; &dquo;What about your

mother? &dquo;. And at the same time such questions can not only createinfornaation gaps but also reduce the degree of difficulty inlistening and speaking. During the lesson, the teacher is alwaysmotivate the students to think and speak by give some gesturesand hints or using many broken sentences. So &dquo;student centre&dquo; &dquo;

is the feature of this episode of lesson. And the teacher teachesthe language such as &dquo;look like, as... as, taller than, a copy of’etc. Just by guiding the students to use them in description. Evenin such a short episode of teacher, the teacher’s role is changing.She is a guide when shi is asking those question and giving the



132

gestures or hints; she is a rrionitor when she corrects the mistakes&dquo;he is the copy of Danial.&dquo; And when she says some brokensentences, she is also a participator, for she is discussing withthe students all the time.

These observation reports are obviously more informative and insightful thosefrom Class 1. Also, more trainees in Class 2 told the lecturer they thoughtsuch kind of observation activity was very helpful to their teaching jobs.

Further development of tasks for Class 3

The third stage of the task development takes into account how to learnmore from the video data observing activity. The trainees of Class 3, afterreceiving the same lectures and fulfilling the same observation task as that inClass 2, were given a further task at the post-viewing stage.

This task required them to design a communicative exercise after viewinghalf of a structural-based English class in an ordinary middle school of Chinawhere the teacher was introducing new words of colour, red, yellow, greenetc. She kept making the whole class do drilling exercises such as’ Whatis this? It is a car. What colour is it? It is red. It is a red car’. Therefore

in the middle of observing this drill activity, the research-Lecturer stoppedthe video and asked the trainees to design a 5-10-minute exercise to continuethe class with instruction as follows:

Imagine you were the teacher in the videoed class carrying oui the teachingup to this stage, what exercises would you design to make these junior middleschool pupils practise or use the language pattern in a more meaningful andcommunicative context? Write the exercise in a format like a section of

teaching material for these pupils to continue the class.

The purpose of this task was to offer the trainees an opportunity to applythe five communicative teaching principles to exercise design, which is amore demanding learning task. The video data provided the starting pointfor shifting from controlled drilling to more meaningful practice in acommunicative way. As a result, the trainees designed various kinds ofexercises. More than two thirds of the 40 exercises collected were better than

the original drilling type in the video. For example, one exercise designedby a trainee was ’Have a game’, which developed as follows.



133

’Guess the colour of my:..

(A student will come to the front and tell the class that helshehas a -in his pocket (or bag or somewhere), other students guessthe colour.) e.g.A: I have a desk in my room. Guess, what colour is it?B: It’s ...

Another trainee designed a ’Pair work’ exercise as follows: &dquo;

Describe the colour of your schoolbag, pen, ruler, pencil-box,English books. Asking questions to each other by using thepatterns like. What color is your (pen)... ? Is it (red)... ? Is it a(red pen)?

Still other exercises collected from Class 3 include: ’ ask pupils to drawpictures with colour pencils following the teacher’s instructions, such asdrawing a yellow banana, a green tree, a red apple etc.’ or ’ask pupils tofill in the blanks with color words when listening to the teacher’s descriptionof a beautiful garden.

These examples indicate that the trainees of Class 3 were trying to applycommunicative principles such as creating information gap, imagining realsituation and using meaningful language forms in exercise designing. Thiscould be a more substantial outcome, reflecting literature reading, lectures,previewing text analysis and previous observation tasks.

Summary and Recommendations

This three-phase research into video viewing task development carriedout in the ten- month English teacher education program in Shenzhen showsthat viewing video data is not an isolated activity in the teacher trainingprogram. It can be used throughout the year and associated with theintroduction of theories and principles in reading and lecturing. Effectivevideo data observation depends on the viewing tasks being carefully designedat different stages of the observation activity .Before viewing, the teachereducator analyses the video data in detail. Then she provides the traineeswith gradual guidance for the viewing task. After viewing, she offers furthertasks to develop the trainees’ critical awareness of events in classroom settings



134

and their ability to design classroom activities. Our experience suggests thefollowing general guidelines for teacher educators.

1. The focus of viewing has to be set up according to one or two specificaspects of the previous lecture and must appear relevant to the trainees.

2. The viewing tasks should enable the trainees to do something practicaland meaningful, such as note taking, commenting and exercisedesigning, so that they not only use their eyes, but also their handsand minds.

3. The task focus needs to be defined clearly in different categories thatare easy to observe and note down.

4. Task instructions need to be as concrete as possible. Too general orabstract an instruction may result in poor, obscure responses that maynot benefit the trainees.

Finally, our research suggests that electronic communication leads tointernational collaboration in ways that were not possible before.

’

NOTE: 1 The Corpus of English Classroom Interaction is one of the four sub- corpora of Middle

School English Education (MSEE). The other three sub-corpora include: 1) Middle SchoolEnglish Teaching Materials (500,000 words), 2) Middle School students’ Written English(1.13 million words) and 3) Middle School Students’ Spoken English (10,000 words).MSEE is a team project headed by Prof. He Anping in the Foreign Languages Departmentof South China Normal University. For more information, contact her.



135

References

Biggs, John & Telfer, Ross 1987. The Process of Learning. Sydney: PrenticeHall.

Breen, Michael 1998. Navigating the discourse: on what is learned in thelanguage classroom. In W. Renandya & G. Jacobs (eds). Learnersand Language Learning. Anthology Series 39. Singapore: SEAMEORELC.

Coulthard, M. & Brazil, D. 1992 Exchange structure. In Malcolm Coulthard(eds). Advances in Spoken Discourse Analysis. London and NewYork: Routledge.

Fanselow, John 1977. Beyond Rashomon: conceptualising and describingthe teaching act. TESOL Quarterly, II, 17-29.

Freeman, Donald & Richards, Jack C. 1996. Teacher Learning in LanguageTeaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Holliday, Adrian 1997. Six lessons: cultural continuity in communicativelanguage teaching. Language Teaching Research. 1, 3: pp212-238.

Lubelska, Diana & Matthews, Margaret 1997. Looking at LanguageClassrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nunan, David 1992. Collaborative language learning and teaching.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pennington, Martha 1999. Framing bilingual classroom discourse.International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 2,1:53-73.

Tanner, R. & Green, C. 1998. Tasks for Teacher Education. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Tsui, Amy 1995. Introducing Classroom Interaction. London: Penguin.



136

van Lier, Leo 1996. Interaction in the Language Curriculum. London andNew York: Longman.

Wajnryb, R. 1992. Classroom Observation Tasks. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Wallace, Michael 1991 Training Foreign Language Teachers. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Wilhelm, Kim Hughes 1997. Sometimes kicking and screaming: Languageteachers-in-training react to a collaborative leaming model. TheModern Languages Journal. 81/4: 527-542.



Documents

Video-Viewing Tasks for Language Teacher Education