The Role of Video Technology in Target Culture Acquisition: The Perspective of Russian Language Learners

摘要

The issue of integrating language and culture teaching has been a focus of researchers' attention for several decades. The discourse builds on the idea of inseparability of language and culture and the need to explore the most effective methods of incorporating target culture into foreign language instruction. One aspect of the issue is utilizing video technology to help learners understand cultural practices and products and develop students' intercultural communicative competence. From this perspective, most of the studies aim at investigating the relationship between the use of video text and either linguistic or cultural gains. There are a few studies which examine students' attitudes and perceptions of learning about the target culture through video technology. In this article, I will discuss students' perception of the use of video technology in the target culture acquisition. A group of intermediate-level learners of Russian as a foreign language received 6 hours of video-based instruction incorporated into their regular conversational Russian classes. Students watched authentic Russian TV news broadcasts preceded by pre-viewing vocabulary exercises and grammar assignments and followed by in-class discussions of the cultural practices reported on in the news clips. After the last teaching session, the participants were surveyed about their perception of learning about Russian culture through authentic TV news. Three major themes were generated from the students' responses: 1) Intrinsic motivation, 2) Discussions of cultural topics, 3) Supportive role of visual input. All participants emphasized that the use of TV news clips significantly raised their motivation to improve the language skills. The students also favored the discussions of cultural topics stimulated by viewing the TV news and pointed out that the conversations provided an opportunity to relate the cultural knowledge they gained to their native culture. Most of the participants agreed that visual cues helped in understanding cultural practices. In particular, the students agreed that visual representations of behavior patterns typical of Russians in particular situations helped in understanding of these practices. To sum up, the results of the study support the use of authentic TV news clips in target culture teaching.