In today's foreign language (FL) teaching paradigm, learners are considered "language users and social agents", and language, "a vehicle for communication rather than a subject to study" (CEFR, 2020: 29). The classroom becomes a space where mediation adopts a central role, making learners aware of the existence of communication barriers beyond interlinguistic ones. To mediate across them, learners must employ all four main skills –speaking, writing, listening and reading– interconnectedly, switching from one to another as they would in 'real-life' communication (Su, 2007), always keeping the interlocutor's needs in mind.
Audio description (AD) is a mode of intersemiotic, accessible audiovisual translation that turns visually-coded elements into verbal commentary to facilitate access for visually-diverse audiences (Walzack & Fryer, 2017). Increased awareness of its social mediation role has contributed to its incorporation into media accessibility regulations across countries (Orero, 2016), further leading to its popularisation as a classroom tool in FL teaching, with promising results (Ibáñez Moreno & Vermeulen, 2017).
This presentation offers a methodological framework for the implementation of AD-based tasks in FL settings to promote meaningful learning and visual diversity awareness. Relying on perceptions expressed by students participating in an AD classroom project, it illustrates AD's potential to provide them with "21st century skills" (Baran-Łucarz & Klimas, 2020: 24) needed to engage in respectful communication in today's globalised world.
Bringing AD into the FL classroom opens up the door to a professional activity with a clearly-set communicative goal. In AD-based tasks students become audio describers, approaching communication not just as learners, or even interlocutors, but as linguistic and social mediators: they must mediate between communication systems, between meanings and connotations, and between a visually-conveyed world and an audience without full access to it. In the process, they become aware of the diversity within communicative needs, as well as of how language use must vary to meet them, how formal and semantic subtleties affect meaning, and how multiple abilities -linguistic and non-linguistic- converge and complement each other to achieve the communicative goal.
References:
Baran-Łucarz, M. & Klimas, A. (2020). Developing 21st century skills in a foreign language classroom: EFL student teachers' beliefs and self-awareness. Academic Journal of Modern Philology, 10, 23-38.
Council of Europe. (2020). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion volume. Council of Europe Publishing.
Ibáñez Moreno, A., & Vermeulen, A. (2017a). Audio description for all: A literature review of its pedagogical values in foreign language teaching and learning. Encuentro. Revista de Investigación e Innovación en la Clase de Idiomas, 26, 52-68.
Orero, P. (2016). From DTV4ALL to HBB4ALL: Accessibility in European broadcasting. In A. Matamala& P. Orero (Eds.), Researching Audio Description (249-267). Palgrave Macmillan.
Su, Y. C. (2007). Students' changing views and the integrated-skills approach in Taiwan's EFL college classes. Asia Pacific Education Review, 8(1), 27-40.
Walczak, A., & Fryer, L. (2017). Creative description: The impact of audio description style on presence in visually impaired audiences. British Journal of Visual Impairment, 35(1), 6-17.
