December 2003 — Volume 7, Number 3
TV News in the EFL/ESL Classroom: Criteria for Selection
David M. Bell
<belldohio.ed>
Ohio University
Abstract
Three broad categories for selecting TV news stories for the EFL/ESL classroom are examined: content schemata, formal schemata and linguistic difficulty. Content is distinguished according to “exogenous” context: specialized or universal prior knowledge required, and “endogenous” context: no prior knowledge required–the news film creates its own context. Universal exogenous contexts and endogenous contexts are likely to be more comprehensible than specialized exogenous contexts. As for formal schemata, the more varied and visual style of American network news together with the trend to “dramatic framing,” narrative-based, and “perspectival” reporting make American network news more accessible to second language learners. Finally, linguistic difficulty is examined according to acoustic, lexical/syntactic and text-type processing difficulties. With regard to text-type, four types of juxtapositions of spoken and visual elements are identified: symbolic, referential, schematic, and iconic. Audiovisual texts with greater iconic juxtaposition are likely to be more comprehensible for second language learners.
Introduction
In the last ten years, the output of TV news has exploded both in English and non-English speaking countries. In the UK, for example, a country long known for its limited number of channels, terrestrial and satellite services now provide more than 100 hours of TV news programming in a 24-hour real-time day (MacGregor, 1997). In Japan, the satellite channel NHK 1 alone provides more than 24 hours of TV news in English each week, including the news bulletins of CNN, ABC, BBC, ATV (Hong Kong), etc., as well as news magazine programs such as Nightline, This Week and The NewsHour. If we add the availability in Japan of twenty-four hour world news networks such as CNN, BBC World, Bloomberg, etc., terrestrial bilingual news broadcasts (Japanese news dubbed into English), and the growing accessibility of TV news on the Internet, the availability of TV news in English is truly all-encompassing. TV news programming in English is not only a vast and growing language learning resource which provides meaningful opportunities for non-reciprocal listening but a vital and immediate alternative source of information. The pedagogical and informative aspects of news broadcasts in English may therefore often and dramatically intersect.
Although much has already been written about selecting and using video material in general in the second language classroom (see for example, Cooper et al., 1991; Joiner, 1990; Rubin, 1995; Shrum & Glisan, 1994; Stempleski & Arcario, 1992; Stempleski & Tomalin, 1990), far less research has focused on the pedagogical problems of selecting and presenting TV news (but see Brinton & Gaskill, 1978; Couch et al., 1999; Cooper, 1996; Gruba, 1997; Meinhof, 1998; Phillips, 1991; Tchaicha, 1996). Given the burgeoning resource and accessibility of TV news in English, this paper examines the criteria for selecting TV news items for use in the second language classroom. In the course of the paper, I will also be discussing some ways of using TV news, but for the most part the paper deals with selectional criteria. [-1-]
Three broad categories for assessing the pedagogical value of TV news are identified:
- background knowledge or content schemata required by viewers to fully understand a news item;
- formal schemata or viewer familiarity with the discourse structure and genre of TV news in general and in particular cultural contexts; and
- the linguistic difficulties of processing combinations of visual and auditory messages.
Of course, the selection of any materials cannot proceed without reference to the listener characteristics of the intended audience. This research is based upon an elective course I have taught in current affairs to a group of male and female Japanese university seniors of low-intermediate to advanced proficiency (N=18). Although these students have low self-confidence with regard to their abilities to listen to authentic materials, they are highly motivated and have a high degree of interest in the materials. In terms of understanding TV news, factors such as interest, motivation and education may be more important than linguistic ability for native and non-native speakers alike (Wodak, 1987). Given that the infrequency of the class’s schedule–just 3 hours per week–and its foreign language context, the responsibility for selection of materials fell mainly on the teacher. Table 1 lists the news items that were used in class.
Table 1: TV News Items Used in Class
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The research design of this paper is in the tradition of the hermeneutic paradigm of naturalistic and action research (Freeman, 1998). It focuses on three modes of enquiry. First, by introspection, it seeks to make explicit the process of material selection by the teacher-researcher. This is seen as part of an ongoing process in teacher research to articulate and represent what teachers know and are learning through their work in the classroom. Second, the paper reflects upon the use of selected materials in the classroom within the framework of action research. And, third, from the perspective of the emic principle of ethnographic research, I survey student perceptions of the difficulty of the materials selected and used during the course.
Content Schemata
Research in cognitive science suggests that knowledge is organized in the form of schemata (Rumelhart, 1980). Schemata consist of stereotypical scenarios, routines and action sequences, which are acquired in the course of an individual’s life experience. Schemata have also been described in terms of frames and frame systems (Minsky, 1975) and scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977). Weaver (1994) defines a schema as “an organized chunk of knowledge or experience, often accompanied by feelings” (p.18). Schemata aid the interpretation of both linguistic and non-linguistic sensory data by providing a context in order to predict meaning and fill in missing information, and this has been amply demonstrated by research in native speaker comprehension of TV news (see Bell, 1991). [-2-]
In L2 reading research, Carrell (1983, 1984, 1987) has confirmed the connection between comprehension and background knowledge established in L1 research. Non-native readers are often unable to make the necessary connections between text and background knowledge and so tend to rely more on linguistic cues than background knowledge. In L2 listening research, several studies have noted the link between topic familiarity and comprehension (Chiang & Dunkel, 1992; Long, 1990; Markham & Latham, 1987; Tchaicha, 1996; Weissenreider, 1987). The practical implication of studies of comprehension and background knowledge for the teaching of listening comprehension has been to stress the importance of activating appropriate schemata in pre-listening activities and grafting new information on to them. Here, I am concerned with how schema theory informs the selection of TV news items and how schemata interact with context.
In terms of video in general and TV news in particular, an important distinction can be made between what I will call “exogenous” context and “endogenous” context. Exogenous contexts require prior knowledge. The nature of this prior knowledge may be specialized or universal. Specialized contexts such as Enron, Northern Ireland, or Iraq require such massive prior knowledge that even many native speakers may lack the appropriate schemata. Decisions to use such materials in the L2 classroom are likely to be taken from the perspective of a content-oriented approach and require a large amount of schemata building. Universal exogenous contexts are contexts such as bicycles, umbrellas, sleeping, etc., sometimes referred to as “human interest” stories, where it may be assumed that learners will have the appropriate background knowledge and experience such that pre-listening activities can be geared to activating those schemata.
Endogenous contexts, such as news film of a sporting incident or natural disaster, require little or no prior knowledge in that they create their own contexts (although, of course, learners will need the appropriate vocabulary to be able to talk about what they see happening in the video sequence). In other words, the visuals speak for themselves. A classic example of an endogenous context was the incident in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics during the 3,000-meter race between the runners Mary Decker and Zola Budd. Towards the closing stages of the race, Decker and Budd seemed to become entangled and Decker fell and subsequently was out of the race. On TV, the incident was played in slow motion from various angles with voiceover commentary.
Of course, individual news items may be made up of degrees of exogenous and endogenous contexts. The news item TWA Flight 800 contained a simulation of what was believed to be the cause of the crash. (See below for a detailed discussion of this sequence.) Students reported that the simulation greatly aided their understanding of what was a specialized exogenous context. The combination of exogenous and endogenous context in one news story counters Cooper’s (1996) preference for selecting what he calls non-episodic news stories similar to CBS News’s “Eye on America” or ABC News’s “A Closer Look.” Non-episodic news stories are complete in themselves while episodic stories present the latest news or episode in an ongoing news story. According to Cooper, episodic stories are dependent on knowledge of the previous events in the story and so put special conditions on comprehension. Interestingly, Cooper cites the TWA tragedy as an example of an episodic story in progress. Clearly episodic news stories like the TWA tragedy have a high degree of intertextuality, but they still may contain elements of endogenous context which may compensate for lack of prior knowledge of the ongoing story. Similarly non-episodic news items, while not requiring knowledge of a prior story, may still require large amounts of background knowledge.
Student perceptions of the difficulty of the TV news items used in class bore out the importance of background knowledge. On the whole, Getting a Bicycle for your Child was considered easy because of its familiarity and because many students could empathize with the experience of a young girl in the news item who described an accident she had had while riding her bike. One student commented: “I also had a few accidents in the past so I was quite interested.” In news items which required more declarative knowledge, the media literacy of individual students became a more important factor in understanding. While most students found Landing on Mars too specialized, one student commented: “This topic was also on Japanese news so I knew the issues and understood most of the video.” For the most part, students suggested a causal link between prior knowledge, interest and understanding, although this interrelationship is complex (Carrell & Wise, 1998). With regard to the news item Senator John Glenn in Space, one student commented: “I wasn’t interested because I didn’t know John Glenn,” while another wrote: “I understood the story because I was interested in the topic.” Comments also confirmed that new knowledge can be grafted onto existing schemata. Commenting on the “Carry-on Luggage” news item, one student wrote: “When I was in a plane I didn’t bother about bags but now I think this is quite a serious problem.” [-3-]
From this discussion, certain pedagogical implications for material selection emerge. Endogenous contexts are likely to be the most exploitable type of news story in the language classroom, but such contexts are likely to account for a small fraction of the news items in any one bulletin. TV news items with universal exogenous contexts, though somewhat less accessible to students, are likely to be far more available. A key factor is the degree to which students can empathize with such items through their own experiences, for example having a bike accident or having a bike stolen, etc. I have found that a useful tool for assessing the likely success of a TV news item is to use an exploratory questionnaire, like the one in Table 2, which seeks to gauge student familiarity with and interest in the topic and the degree to which students can empathize with a topic because of a shared experience. A rule of thumb: If I can expect that my students are able to respond to at least four questions about the topic, especially with regards to shared experiences, then the TV news item is likely to work in class.
Table 2: Questionnaire — Bikes
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However, a warning should be made with regard to overgeneralizing the teacher’s own cultural experience. Whereas I was correct in assuming that all my students had traveled on an airplane and so were familiar with carry-on luggage and overhead bins, I was wrong in assuming that the problem of passengers bringing on too many carry-on bags could be generalized from North America to Japan. In other words, it is important to remember that schemata are socially constructed and therefore often culturally specific mental categories into which events and individuals are sorted. Although Japanese and North Americans may share the mental category of carry-on luggage, the content of that category may vary. Carry-on luggage in the North American mindset may be stereotypically associated with the frustration of flying brought on by both the need to carry on as much luggage as possible and the inadequacy of the space provided. From the Japanese perspective, carry-on luggage may be considered a convenience and passengers feel obliged to allow others space for their carry-on items. News items with imputed universal appeal may therefore facilitate understanding not only with regard to the discourse under study but on the larger level of cross-cultural communication.
The news, therefore, provides a particularly illuminating view of the stereotypical categories and preoccupations of a particular culture. The selection and treatment of news items reflects shared stereotypes of media producers and consumers of news within a particular social context; news may be seen as a creation of a journalistic process. A striking event will reinforce a stereotype, and, reciprocally, the firmer the stereotype, the more likely are relevant events to become news (Fowler, 1991). Media researchers refer to the criteria for selection of news items as “news values.” Galtung and Ruge (1973) compiled an exhaustive list of news values or “criterial factors.” Unexpected events like the TWA Flight 800 crash are more newsworthy. At the same time, events which people expect to happen (gun-related accidents in the U.S.) or want to happen (John Glenn returning to space) may also be newsworthy, and so on. For the most part, therefore, the actual content of these values is culturally determined. An awareness of the determining factors of news values can help the teacher both in the selection, trialing and presentation of news items. I have suggested that TV news items with universal exogenous contexts are likely to be the most available and the most accessible to students. Yet before such items are used in the classroom their appeal needs to be tested through such devices as questionnaires. And during their presentation their value as newsworthy items in the culture of origin needs to be made explicit. [-4-]
Formal Schemata
Formal or textual schemata refer to our knowledge of how discourse is organized, and with respect to TV news the formal structure is highly predictable though clearly variable according to program, channel and culture of origin (Meinhof, 1998; Phillips, 1991). TV news consists of varying combinations of multiple speakers with multiple speech styles: anchors, correspondents, experts, vox populi–“the man on the street,” and multiple modalities of delivering the message: talking heads, voiceovers, graphics, captions, films, etc.
Yet despite this multiplicity of messenger and modality of delivery, TV journalism is still heavily influenced by the conventions of print journalism. TV news stories have been described as newspaper stories with moving pictures (Lewis, 1994). Like print journalism, TV news stories have a pyramidal discourse structure. (See van Dijk, 1988 for a detailed analysis of the discourse structure of print news stories.) Anchors present the main points of the story and then one or more correspondents provide a more detailed report of the story. TV news stories like print journalism tend to be non-narrative discontinuous fragments of information. However, unlike newspaper articles TV stories are usually summed up by a correspondent or anchor and the linearity of TV news places extra importance on the linking role of the anchor.
While the textual organization of TV news is highly predictable, there are significant differences in news formats within and between cultures (see Meinhof, 1998). Most studies have compared US and non-US news channels. Interestingly, the increasing populist trend in American network news–the so-called “dumbing down” of the news–has made American network news far more suitable as a pedagogical tool than other TV news sources. Below I discuss the ways that the formal structure of US news differs from non-US news and how these differences influence the use of American TV news in the classroom.
First, American TV news tends to be more visual and varied. There is a greater use of correspondents and interviews with experts and vox populi. American network news tends to contain more shots per news story: the Carry-on Luggage news story had 33 shots in 2 mins. The minimum and maximum times for shots may be taken as an indication of the assumptions by networks as to the audience’s perceptual capacity and attention span. The faster cutting of American network news has often been attributed to the “dumbing down” of network news as it strives to compete with more sensationalist local news channels (Graber, 1994). Meinhof (1998) fears that in the face of such varied and often conflicting modalities of information, language learners are likely to tune out rather than work on the gist of the message. But this has to be set against the benefits to comprehension of the stimulating juxtaposition of words and images.
Second, as a further consequence of the competition with the populist and sensationalist treatment of news by local news channels, US news tends to use more dramatic framing or in other words, to treat the news as “infotainment.” Here, stories are depicted primarily as dramatic events (Graber, 1994). The more obvious examples of this are the O.J. Simpson case and the ice-skating feud between Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. But it also includes the use of dramatic framing in more serious news items. The news story Children and Guns included a sequence from a police experiment that used hidden cameras to monitor children’s reactions to finding a gun and the reactions of their parents behind a false mirror. It has been suggested that dramatic framing attracts viewers who might otherwise ignore newscasts by increasing their emotional involvement with important political issues and so stimulates them to think about these issues (Sniderman et al., 1991). Dramatic framing is likely to also hook the interests of second language learners who may or may not constitute the educated elite which more traditional news targets. [-5-]
Third, US news tends to more transparent perspectival reporting (Locher & Wortham, 1994; Pufahl, 1992). All news reporting is inherently perspectival in the sense that real objectivity is unattainable. It is generally accepted that “the news is not merely relaying an objective truth waiting out in the world to be ‘gathered’ but is instead selecting, shaping and producing its message” (MacGregor, 1997, p. 78). So if indeed “objectivity” is unattainable, it may therefore be considered more beneficial to comprehension if TV news makes more explicit how stories are intended to be interpreted. Comparing German and American TV news, Pufahl (1992) found that American network news gives far more explicit cues as to how the news is to be understood and interpreted by providing explicit information about how new information is related to already existing knowledge structures and expectations on the ideational, discoursal and interpersonal modes of communication. In contrast, in Germany, according to Pufahl, news reporting consists of stating the “facts” and letting viewers draw their own conclusions.
The difference is captured by Nimmo & Combs’ (1985) distinction between the journalistic styles of “elitist/factual” reporting and “pluralist/feature.” The “elitist/factual” style of reporting aims at an unemotional recounting of verifiable information to an intellectually mature audience. A “pluralist/feature” approach attempts to place an event into a larger context showing how it illustrates a recurrent pattern similar to a feature article. Here are two examples of pluralist/feature/perspectival reporting taken from ABC News. Both are extracts from the anchor Peter Jennings. In the first extract about airlines, Jennings first personalizes the extract by connecting it to the viewers’ experience of flying at weekends and by giving the extract a byline “the frustration of flying,” which aligns Jennings and the viewers, and further seeks to activate the appropriate interpretive schemata. Jennings then goes on to provide background information before the report begins:
Tonight, perhaps to remind you of your weekend we’re going to take a closer look at the frustration of flying. With the economy as bountiful as it is for so many more Americans than ever before more Americans than ever are flying. So far this year airline flights overall have been taking off as full as any flights have been in fifty years. They’ve been landing that way too. And a lot of passengers are not very happy. Complaints this year are up 14%. First of all here’s ABC’s Michelle Norris on the connection.
The second extract introduces a report about the return of Senator John Glenn into space. Jennings cues in the viewers’ interpretation of the upcoming report by a series of questions.
But is it a good idea? In other words, is it good for science? Is it good for the Senator? Is this the way NASA should be spending its money? Is it a gimmick to rejuvenate interest in the space program when money is tight? Let’s start with ABC’s Ned Potter.
It’s not that non-American news reporting is never so transparently perspectival but that such feature-like reporting is more often found in news magazine programs rather than news bulletins.
Two pedagogical implications emerge from this discussion. Does an awareness of the textual organization of a newscast as it pertains to TV news in general and to a network in particular facilitate the task faced by a second language listener? Second, are there particular textual organizations which are more helpful to second language learners than others? Research into the effects of knowledge of textual schemata has been scant compared with that of content schemata. Weissenreider (1987) considered the effects of both textual and content schemata in a study of the listening comprehension of TV news by intermediate and advanced students of Spanish. Since most of the students were journalism majors, Weissenreider attributes their understanding to the interplay of textual and content schemata and effective listener strategies. Phillips (1991) reports on two introspective experiments with textual schemata in which subjects were required to identify the textual outline (introduction by anchor, introduction by correspondent, correspondent relates story over action footage, interview, etc.) of a newscast prior to dealing with the content of the newscasts. Subjects reported that textual schemata generating activities facilitated comprehension. Tchaicha (1996) supports Weissenreider’s claim that it is the interplay of content knowledge and formal knowledge of the structure of American TV news which facilitates L2 comprehension.
Meinhof (1998) argues that second language learners’ processing difficulties with TV news lie less with the linguistic complexity of the texts and more with lack of knowledge of the structural organization of TV news. Given the highly patterned genre of TV news, students can develop “metadiscursive” skills which allow them to anticipate meanings, to focus on key moments of a news story and to ignore others. Meinhof goes on to lay out the basic features of what she calls the “regularity principle” of TV news: [-6-]
- regularity of transmission time, length of news broadcast, and layout;
- regularity of story sequencing and type of story selected (news values);
- regularity of surface structure of individual news stories (studio presentations, voiceover visuals, on-site correspondents, etc.);
- regularity of schematic structures of new stories (strikes, diplomatic visits, natural disasters have conventionalized predictable story ingredients), and
- regularity of images–stock images tend to accompany particular news schemata.
Meinhof concludes:
[I]f learners become aware that they already apply some of these strategies when viewing TV news in their mother tongue, though largely in an unconscious manner, this will help to transfer those strategies to the foreign language [and] raise their analytical powers in relation to their own home news programs and thus encourage a wider media literacy. (1998, p.36)
One way of activating formal schemata that I have used successfully as a pre-listening exercise is to ask students to match extracts from the news report with the various speakers. This not only serves as a way of introducing the formal structure of news reports but also helps students anticipate the content and introduce key vocabulary. By making explicit the clues students use to match speaker and extract, latent textual knowledge can be exploited.
Table 3: Activating textual schemata
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Alternatively, Cooper (1996) suggests focusing students’ attention on the visual element of a news story first as a means of making transparent the formal structure of the story and as a bridge to the more demanding task of decoding the spoken text. Cooper suggests that students be first asked to count the number of speakers in a news story and then to try to identify their roles as anchors, reporters, experts, vox populi, etc.
Linguistic Difficulty
Following Rubin (1994), I discuss linguistic or textual difficulties under three headings of text characteristics: acoustic, lexis/syntax and text-type (which includes both visual and linguistic text). The primary area of interest is the juxtaposition of spoken and visual texts.
- AcousticThe acoustic characteristics of a text include speech-rate, pause phenomena, hesitation, sandhi (assimilation, mutation, contraction, liaison and elision), stress and rhythmic patterning. My students regularly indicated that anchors were easier to understand than other “talking heads,” especially vox populi. An analysis of why this phenomenon should be the case provides a greater understanding of the difficulties of processing acoustic messages for second language learners.
- Standardized pronunciation : Vox populi display a greater variation of accents based on region, age, socio-economic class, race, and ethnic identity. The anchors of the three major networks, Peter Jennings (ABC), Tom Brokaw (NBC), and Dan Rather (CBS), although differing in their regional affiliations (Ontario, Canada, Nebraska and Texas, respectively) represent a standardized educated American accent.
- Clarity of enunciation and absence of ambient noise: Interviews with the vox populi, or “man on the street” often do take place on the street.
- Planned vs. spontaneous discourse : As opposed to the spontaneity of vox populi, the spoken text of anchors and correspondents, of course, is highly planned which leads to
- more predictable and simpler intonational and kinesic features and
- an absence of hesitations and repairs. And ultimately
- familiarity with the anchor’s speech style facilitates comprehension (and this might be one argument along with conventionalizing the formal features of TV news for choosing news items from just one news network). Conversely the lack of familiarity with vox populi and their speech styles creates greater processing difficulties. Vox populi are often inadequately identified often lacking supercaptions and introductions. For the most part, vox populi lead-in thoughts are edited out, further decontextualizing them and so adding to the processing difficulty. The processing difficulty is compounded by the brief amount of time allotted to vox populi. In the Carry-on Luggage news item, whereas the preamble by the anchor took 17 seconds, the longest vox pop was 3 seconds.
Yet from the perspective of structural and lexical simplicity vox pop talk is much simpler than anchors or correspondents. Here are two examples of vox populi with which my students had difficulties. In example A, taken from the Carry-on Luggage news item, the speaker is a middle-aged woman, and in example B, taken from Getting a Bicycle for your Child, the speaker is a 12 year-old-girl. Neither speaker has a marked regional accent.
A It hit me right on top of my head and knocked me straight to my knees. (Carry-on Luggage) B I was riding my bike with my dad and my little sister and I was going down a hill awfully fast and I hit a manhole[1] and I went over my handlebars and fell right on top of my head and landed on the left side of my face. (Getting a Bicycle for your Child)
- Lexis/Syntax TV news as a whole and news items in particular contain a high degree of redundancy. Redundancy in input is generally understood to aid second language comprehension (Chaudron, 1983; Chiang & Dunkel, 1992). Chiang & Dunkel found that modification–repetition of constituents, paraphrase, and synonyms–works best with higher levels. The Carry-on Luggage TV news item contained the following example of modification: “people are cramming and stuffing and shoving and searching, looking for places for all that carry-on luggage.” The amount of redundancy was further increased by the use of a shot of a passenger stowing a large bag in an overhead compartment. Simple redundancy–repetition of content words–works better with lower levels. The Carry-on Luggage TV news item used the following repetition and synonyms: carry-on baggage, carry-on bags (2), bags (2), carry-on luggage, luggage, carry-on (2). This was accompanied by 18 shots of carry-on luggage. News items, therefore, with this kind of thematic unity can be highly effective in terms of vocabulary development in a second language classroom.Brinton & Gaskill (1978) argue that one of the greatest advantages of using TV news is that of vocabulary development and the amount of recycling of vocabulary in episodic news items. My students did predictably better with more familiar lexical sets (bicycles) than with more specialized vocabulary (Landing on Mars). And they also seemed to comprehend more when the items in lexical sets had a componential relationship as is the case with guns, bicycles and airplanes and their various parts. One further beneficial effect of what Fairclough (1995) calls the “conversationalization” of TV news is the measured use of high frequency idioms by anchors and correspondents: “a pain in the neck” (Carry-on Luggage), “more bang for your buck” (Landing on Mars) and how these idioms can be targeted to enrich learner vocabularies. At the same time, vox populi were more likely to make what could be rather opaque cultural references: “You just get the impression that it’s more like riding a Greyhound Bus”–a passenger describing air travel today. And finally numbers proved to be an especially difficult lexical item for my students to deal with, whether spoken or written.
- Text Type
- Narrative vs. non-narrative textResearch into native speaker comprehension of TV news suggests that viewers experience substantial comprehension and recall difficulties (Bell, 1991; Gunter, 1987). Stories with a clear narrative story line tend to be processed better than those without, but for the most part TV news is made up of non-narrative text. In L2 listening comprehension research, Shohamy and Inbar (1991) found that when they compared the relative comprehensibility of three text types: a news broadcast using a prewritten, edited monologue; a mini-lecture consisting of a monologue based on written notes; and an interactive consultative dialogue, the news item was the most difficult to process. Brown (1995) has shown that narrative texts are easier for L2 learners to listen to and recall than expository texts are, and further, events described in chronological order are easier to recall than narratives with disrupted sequences or flashbacks. This suggests that that the general trend of network American TV news towards dramatic framing of news stories, news as “infotainment” and the conversationalization of TV news discourse is likely to have beneficial effects for L2 processing (leaving aside the question of whether what they are successfully processing is meaningful on a content level). [-9-]
- Talking Heads vs. VoiceoversThe importance of kinesics features in second language listening comprehension has been long established (Antes, 1996; Kellerman, 1992; Pennycook, 1985; von Raffler-Engel, 1980). However, Gunter (1980) found that talking-head news presentations prompted less recall than voiceover visuals and even audio only. However, a key variable here is the function of the talking-head in the discourse structure. Robinson and Levy (1986) found that the shorter the studio presentation the better the comprehension of the news items. Meinhof (1998) argues that if listener schemata are already activated, introductions by anchors may not even be processed. However, talking-heads in the form of correspondents, interviews with celebrities, experts and vox populi, and recaps by the anchor are likely to be processed more intently. Indeed, multiple talking heads is one feature of the varied visual style of American network news. In the Carry-on Luggage news item, 52 seconds out of 2 minutes feature talking heads. The effectiveness of mixed formats is supported by Brosius (1991), who found that comprehension of television news is enhanced by use of film as opposed to “talking heads” only and by mixing up formats. Comprehension was lowest for talking head items in programs with unvaried format and best for film items in mixed format newscasts.
- The juxtaposition of spoken and visual texts Perhaps one of the least understood features of TV news broadcasts is the juxtaposition of words and pictures, especially which has primacy in the process of decoding. The established semiotic view exemplified by Barthes (1977) is to argue for the dependence of images on verbal text or, to be more exact, the “anchorage” or narrowing down of the multiplicity of imagistic interpretations by the spoken text. But writers like Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) have argued that visuals can be understood as having their own independent grammar. Many second language listening theorists have sided with Barthes’ view and seen video in terms of the support the visual element gives to the understanding of the spoken text. But as Gruba (1997) notes, such a view appears to be simplistic. First, distinguishing between what we hear and what we see is not necessarily a difference between words and pictures but a difference in the way we receive the information though our eyes and ears (Meinhof, 1998). Inscriptions, captions, posters, diagrams for example appear on the visual track while the soundtrack may carry background noises and music as well as the spoken text. Second, it may be better to conceive of words and pictures creating “whole message units” (Salomon, 1979) rather than separate entities. Certainly, there will be instances when the linguistic text drives the comprehension of the visual input and there will also be instances where the visuals are dominant, but for the most part comprehension will depend on the interaction between the two. Gruba notes:
[V]isual elements do not ‘merely’ provide support for verbal elements: they are better thought of as an integral element in videotext that interplay with verbal elements to influence a listener’s emerging interpretation. (1997, p.134) In order to understand this integral role, Meinhof argues that “visuals have to be treated as a separate code of information whose relationship to the verbal needs to be recognized rather than taken as self-evident” (1998, p. 29). Below are three frameworks which have been used in second language listening to understand the relationship of words and images in news broadcasts, which will provide some insights into selectional criteria for TV news stories from this audiovisual perspective.
- Symbolic: words and visuals are tangentially related, with visuals used mainly to illustrate the discourse/sentence topic. This is similar to Meinhof’s notion of displacement. The example below taken from Senator John Glenn in Space illustrates the use of symbolic images.
Table 4: Symbolic relationship of words and images
Scene #Central visual feature Time
(secs)Spoken voiceover textAudio source 1Start of a sprint race at a senior athletics meeting. Runners are in their blocks. Sound of starting gun Athletes look to be 60+ 1Dr.Christine Cassel Reporter 2Same sprint race. Runners are sprinting in their lanes 3joins a chorus of aging specialists Reporter 360+ athlete doing the long jump 2and others who doubt Reporter 450+ woman competing in a swimming race 2that Glenn as guinea pig will provide breakthroughs Reporter 5Close up of 60+woman clenching her teeth in a walking race 1Nevertheless Reporter 660+ man doing the pole-vault 2she applauds him for setting an example Reporter - Referential: visuals are used to illustrate people, places and things referred to in the audio text. So, for example, in Table 5, which details one segment of the news item Census Data, scene 2 shows a sales clerk making an imprint of a credit card as two customers wait, while at the same time the voiceover says: “People are using credit cards more.” So the linguistic reference to credit card is matched by an illustration of a credit card on the visual track. Similarly, in scenes 5-7, reference is made to dogs and cats which is matched by the appropriate visual representation. Of course, the distinction between referential and symbolic images is not always clear-cut. In the Carry-on Luggage item, most of the 18 shots of carry-on luggage may be considered to fulfill more of a symbolic rather than a referential function.[-11-]
- Schematic: the use of diagrams, charts, tables, and captions, which offer a schematic representation of the audio text. The following example is taken from the Census Data news item.
Table 5: Schematic relationship of words and images
Scene # Central visual feature Caption Time
(secs)Spoken voiceover text Audio source 1 Crowds walking down sidewalk Median net worth
$56,4005The average family’s net worth has gone up almost $4,000 in 3 years Anchor 2 In a store. Close up of sales clerk making an imprint of a credit card. Camera draws back to show customers on other side of the counter 56% have credit cards
28% hardly ever pay off7People are using credit cards more. More than half say they use them now.Less than a third actually pay them off. Anchor 3 Woman in a movie theater box office giving tickets to customer Entertainment spending
$1,7757The average family spends $1800 a year on entertainment, movies, books and video rentals included. Anchor - Iconic: the use of videotaped incidents or simulations where the spoken text parallels the visual text. The following example is taken from the TWA Flight 800 news item. This part of the news item uses an animated sequence to illustrate how the investigators believe the plane crashed. The italicized clauses are dynamically illustrated in the animated simulation. Each animated action is precisely cued to its verbal description.
Table 6: Iconic relationship of words and images
Scene # Central visual feature Time
(secs)Spoken voiceover text Audio source 1 Workers sorting through the wreckage of TWA 800 5The FBI with help from the CIAput together an analysis of the flight to explain Reporter 2 Animated simulation of the crash 41what eyewitnesses saw. Some 12 minutes after take-off, at about 13,400 feet,
1 the center fuel-tank explodes.
2 Seconds later the nose rips off.
3 But the rest of the plane with engines running continues upwards,
4 streams of fire spewing from the crippled jetliner. People looking up then mistook the flaming fuselage for a missile.
5 The fuselage begins to fall and twist
6 with the left wing breaking off.
7 Jet fuel erupts into a fireball.
At about the same time, the sound wave from the initial explosion hits the beach 9 miles away.
That’s when most of the eyewitnesses look up.Reporter 3 Night time aerial view of ocean 4The streaks they see are a plane already on fire and breaking apart. Reporter
- Symbolic: words and visuals are tangentially related, with visuals used mainly to illustrate the discourse/sentence topic. This is similar to Meinhof’s notion of displacement. The example below taken from Senator John Glenn in Space illustrates the use of symbolic images.
Conclusion
Notes
[1] I had thought that manhole would be a problem for my Japanese students but it turns out to be a loan word in Japanese.
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About the Author
David Bell is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Ohio University. He teaches courses in Methodology, Materials Development and Pedagogical Grammar and supervises the teaching practicum. He has taught EFL in Britain, Italy, Japan and the USA. Besides listening comprehension, his research interests are TESOL methodology, language and movement, and pragmatics.
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