How input - Enhanced authentic videos support english listening comprehension: A discussion from an interactionist perspective

105KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 DISCUSSION v
1. INTRODUCTION
Technologies seem to have come to aid listening 
skill earlier and with greater diversity than the 
other three macro English skills. Robin (2011) lists 
broadcasts, tape recorders, and talking pictures as 
some of the electronic mediators to the teaching of 
listening skill before 1975. Since the 1980s, these 
devices have been either substituted or made more 
sophisticated, or naturally both, by an unending 
source of authentic audiovisual materials, which 
in turn came along with the advent of the Internet 
and Web 2.0. However, as authentic materials 
were historically created by and intended for 
native speakers in contrast to those created for 
pedagogical purposes, they are highly challenging 
NGUYEN XUAN NGHIA*
* Hanoi University of Science and Technology, nghia.nx89@gmail.com
Received: 20/4/2019; Revised: 14/5/2019; Accepted: 17/5/2019
in terms of grammatical, lexical, genre, and 
cultural contents (Garrett, 2009). Authentic 
videos are thus dismissed as less appropriate for 
learners at levels other than intermediate or above 
(Guariento & Morley, 2001). One may consider 
this a valid account for language teachers’ attempts 
to intentionally reduce the difficulty of authentic 
materials, but as Taylor (1994) puts it, materials 
can only be truly authentic when language is 
simplified by no means. With this understanding, 
the paper highlights annotation and caption as 
two video input enhancement techniques that help 
create pedagogic videos without altering their 
authenticity. First concepts around authenticity 
and its benefits for listening comprehension are 
summarized. Then literature is reviewed on two 
ABSTRACT
With the light that literature has shed on the merits of authentic videos, this paper aims to 
foreground two video input enhancement activities, namely annotating and captioning and argue 
that when embedded in authentic videos, annotations and captions aid EFL learners’ vocabulary 
acquisition and thus English listening comprehension. To this end, annotations and captions are 
discussed on the theoretical grounds of Multimodality and the Interactionist Theory of Second 
Language Acquisition (SLA). The paper concludes with implications for language teachers as to 
the use of input-enhanced authentic videos for educational purposes in the listening classroom. 
Keywords: listening comprehension, authentic videos, input enhancement, multimodality, 
interactionist theory
HOW INPUT-ENHANCED AUTHENTIC 
VIDEOS SUPPORT ENGLISH LISTENING 
COMPREHENSION: A DISCUSSION 
FROM AN INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE
106 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
v DISCUSSION
theoretical tenets – multimodality and Interactionist 
SLA – on which the discussion of annotation and 
caption is based. At the end, recommendations are 
made for language teachers in regards to the use of 
authentic videos for pedagogical purposes in their 
listening classroom.
2. AUTHENTICITY
Though authenticity was soon a subject of 
ample discussion in the 1970s as a result of the 
Communicative Language Teaching approach, 
it has remained ambiguous in the field of 
applied linguistics. It is the concern over the 
multifacetedness of authenticity – whether it is 
associated with the text per se, the interaction 
between the teacher and the learner, the tasks 
chosen, etc. (Gilmore, 2007) – that has led 
scholars yet to address it fully. For example, 
Wallace focuses on the material aspect and 
defines authentic materials as “real life texts, not 
written for pedagogic purposes” (1992, p.145), 
while Tomlinson accentuates the task, referring 
to an authentic task as “one which involves the 
learners in communicating to achieve an outcome, 
rather than to practice the language” (2013, p.19). 
Morrow’s (1977) definition is used in this paper to 
summarize those varying lens: “An authentic text 
is a stretch of real language, produced by a real 
speaker or writer for a real audience and designed 
to convey a real message of some sort” (p.13). 
Authentic materials can be classified in 
different ways. On the grounds of modality, 
Genhard (1996) classifies authentic materials into 
three categories: authentic audiovisual materials, 
which integrate both pictures and sounds; 
authentic visual materials, which are image-based 
and wordless; and authentic printed materials, 
which are presented on paper. Concerning mainly 
authenticity level of the text, Campos (1992) 
proposes three types: authentic text, adapted or 
simplified text, and creative text. An authentic 
text is not simplified or modified to any degree, 
and represent language used by native speakers in 
genuine situations for the fulfilment of their social 
needs. An adapted or simplified text is characterized 
by the simplification of language for the purpose 
of grammar and vocabulary introduction and 
reinforcement. And, a creative text is created on 
the basis of the sequence of contents covered in a 
textbook. This view is shared by Geddes and White 
(1978), who align Campos’s (1992) paradigm 
to only two categories of discourse: unmodified 
authentic discourse and simulated authentic 
discourse, with the former being “authentic text” 
while the latter encompassing “adapted text” and 
“creative text”. The diagram below represents 
types of authentic materials in light of the three 
mentioned approaches.
Figure 1: Types of authentic materials 
(synthesized from Genhard, 1996; Campos, 1992; 
and Geddes & White, 1978)
Authentic materials have been widely proved 
beneficial for L2 listening comprehension in a 
few ways. First, learners yield constant exposure 
to real-life situations that are unachievable 
inside the textbook-based classroom. Scholars 
such as Gilmore (2004) highlight the cultural 
contextualization of learning as the unique value 
of authentic mat ... in the person 
(learner)’s mind 
Focusing attention 
on linguistic form in 
the input 
How interaction with computer promotes 
L2 acquisition in light of Chapelle’s (2005) 
conceptualization is indexed in the learner’s 
exposure to enhanced input displayed on the 
computer screen. During this process, the learner 
notices input forms and makes form-meaning 
mappings, then gradually internalizes those 
connections via a course of intrapersonal activity. 
This standpoint by Chapelle provides thrust for a 
good deal of research. For example, Borrás and 
Lafayette (1994) found that accompanying aural 
input with L2 subtitles in listening lessons offered 
learners input of two modes, to the latter which 
they referred to decode the former in terms of not 
only general messages but also linguistic forms 
and meanings. In another study, Grace (1998) 
put learners in contact with L1 translations and 
annotations of different types (e.g. written and 
visual) to aid comprehension of vocabulary, and 
concluded that those enhanced inputs remedied 
miscomprehension and prompted noticing. This 
line of research has also been extended to the area 
of reading comprehension, with Plass et al. (1998) 
providing multiple forms of annotations to help with 
vocabulary and proving their encouraging effects 
on learners’ acquisition. These findings mirror 
the need and also potential for the introduction 
of Interactionist SLA into instructional design. 
Given Long’s (1991) argument about the nature of 
the Interactionist Theory that only when noticed 
and comprehended can input become valid, 
instructional materials or CALL tasks should be 
designed in a way that key linguistic features are 
made salient, and enhancement of linguistic input 
is offered (Chapelle, 2007). In the next parts, I 
provide definitions of the two input enhancement 
methods – annotation and caption, and discuss 
them on the grounds of Multimodality and 
Interactionist SLA to illuminate how they support 
listening comprehension. 
5. ANNOTATION AND CAPTION
Annotations are explanatory notes added to 
demystify the meaning of an unknown word and 
come in three fundamental forms: written, visual/
pictorial, and audiovisual (Jones, 2004). Written 
annotations can be L2 definitions or L1 translations 
of the target word. Visual/pictorial annotations, 
the representation in imagery, and audiovisual 
annotations, the support with both pictures and 
sounds, may potentially overload listeners if 
embedded in an existing audiovisual layer and 
seem to be a more appropriate for multimedia 
reading texts, so are not within the scope of the 
current paper. 
Captions refer to “on-screen text in a given 
language combined with a soundtrack in the same 
language” (Markham & Peter, 2003, p.332). It is 
important to distinguish captions from subtitles 
which refer to “on-screen text in the same 
language of the viewers that accompany the 
second language soundtrack of the video material” 
(ibid.). In alignment with the nature of authentic 
videos as previously mentioned, that is language 
input should not be simplified or modified, the 
term “captions” is employed to address the matter 
under examination in this study. Guillory (1998) 
classifies captions into two types: keyword captions 
and full captions, with the former highlighting 
109KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 DISCUSSION v
only words that are either targeted or tough in 
their meaning, pronunciation, or morphological 
structure by themselves, and the latter displaying 
the entire spoken text. 
6. DISCUSSION
6.1. Annotated and captioned videos are 
multimodal
One of the arguments considered in the present 
paper is that annotated and/or captioned videos are 
multimodal. In fact, a typical video is multimodal 
for its aural and visual representations (with 
the understanding that bimodality is a form of 
multimodality as mentioned earlier). A written 
annotation, when added to a video, makes it 
threefold in modality, i.e. aural, visual, and textual. 
In a similar vein, when captions, be they keyword 
or full, are inserted into a video, they radically 
switch it from a piece of two-modality material 
into that of three. Figures 2 and 3 below illustrate 
this. It is also important to note that annotations 
and captions can appear synchronously in a same 
video, and language teachers can use different 
dynamics, depending on their specific aims. For 
example, instead of presenting the textual content 
in form of either annotations or captions, they may 
do so with both by providing keyword captioning 
of a lexical item on the bottom of the screen and 
its definition or translation in an annotation bubble 
on the top. 
Integrating annotations and captions into 
videos clearly signifies the plurality of semiotic 
modes in accordance with Kress and Van 
Leeuwen’s (2001) definition of multimodal 
materials. These modes consolidate one another 
and provide complementary and mutual support as 
in the examples above: the annotated definition of 
“the Celts” and the captioned keyword “immense” 
(the textual modality) synchronize with the 
speaker’s speech (the aural modality). This in 
turn generates an eminently interactive product 
that aids learning to a great extent as indicated by 
literature regarding multimodality, i.e. linguistic 
gains, paralinguistic subtleties, and motivational 
factors (e.g. Woottipong, 2014; Harmer, 2007; 
Jones & Plass, 2002)
6.2. Annotated and captioned videos 
promote listening comprehension from the 
perspective of Interactionist SLA
The other argument made about annotated and 
captioned videos in this paper is that they offer 
comprehensible input to facilitate listening 
comprehension. According to researchers (e.g. 
Kim, 2015), L2 listening comprehension is a 
complex process, involving two processes: a top-
down process and a bottom-up process. In the top-
down process, learners mobilize their “schemata 
or background knowledge” to gain the gist and 
main ideas of the aural text, while with bottom-up 
processing, they are drawn to discrete words and 
phrases to decipher the meaning and content (Kim, 
2015, p.16). 
Figure 2. Annotation of “the Celts” Figure 3. Keyword captioning of “immense”
110 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
v DISCUSSION
Regarding top-down processing, annotated 
videos serve well on this, in that the annotated 
content goes beyond explanation of a lexical word to 
the level that is directed at activation of background 
knowledge and scaffolding of comprehension. 
To the best of my knowledge, this is lacking in 
previous studies, so purposely made prominent 
in this report. For example, in a video comparing 
the size of the Sun with that of other stars in the 
universe, I created an annotation with the question 
“Is the Sun the largest star in the universe?” to 
elicit the learners’ prior knowledge about this 
matter and prepare them for what was coming next 
in the video (Figure 4). This conforms to Kim’s 
(2015) analysis of the top-down listening process 
that processing prior knowledge paves the way for 
learners’ “grasp of incoming information” (p.16). 
Bottom-up processing is catalyzed by 
interactions with both annotations of individual 
words/phrases and captions. With annotations, 
the matter of concern is whether definitions or 
explanations should be provided in L1 as in Figure 
5 or L2 as in Figure 2. In actuality, the speed of 
an authentic video would not afford listeners time 
and space to read L2 definitions, so L1 translations 
seem to be the ideal option. This can be elucidated 
by a body of research about the inextricable link 
between L2 words, L1 translations, and pictures 
(e.g. Paivio, 1986). Take a further look into Paivio’s 
dual coding theory for an example. The theory 
postulates that there are two information channels 
in the learners’ mind: an L1 verbal channel and 
a nonverbal/imagery channel. The L2 verbal 
channel is formed and developed owing to the fact 
that the L2 word is connected to the image and L1 
verbal subsystem existing in the learner’s mind. 
This can be further illustrated from Figure 5, that 
is by the time listeners hear the word “the Celts” 
and the image depicting these tribes pop up on the 
screen, the L1 translation “người xen-tơ” allows 
them to assimilate “the Celts” with its meaning 
thanks to their consciousness of the L1 and visual 
cues. Captions provide half of this route, in this 
regard, as far as keyword captions are concerned. 
This means that when hearing and seeing the 
captioned word and the corresponding image on 
the screen, listeners make an interconnection and 
thus the form-meaning mapping. In fact, literature 
has proved that watching videos with keyword 
captions made it easier for learners to understand 
the content for decreased cognitive load which 
would otherwise be heavy under full caption 
condition (Guillory, 1998). 
Above all, the described forms of annotations 
and captions result in interactive experiences 
between the learners and the computer rather 
than between the learners and native speakers 
as originally stipulated by Interactionist theory 
of SLA. Put it differently, they constitute a 
technological platform for the learners to interact 
with enhanced inputs and benefit from them for 
lexical acquisition and comprehension of aural 
texts (Chapelle, 2003). 
Figure 4: Annotation of a question Figure 5: Annotation of “the Celts”
111KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 DISCUSSION v
7. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The departure point for this paper is that authentic 
videos are beneficial for second language learners 
in listening comprehension, fundamentally 
thanks to genuine situations and linguistic 
and paralinguistic elements they provide. On 
this premise, the paper revisits annotation and 
caption as two input enhancement activities 
that can be performed on authentic videos, and 
argues that they further aid learners’ linguistic 
gains and thus listening comprehension abilities. 
From its discussion grounded on the theories of 
Multimodality and Interactionist SLA, the paper 
arrives at the following practical implications for 
language teachers who intend to use authentic 
videos in their listening classroom. 
[1] Videos should be opted for with the 
perception that their authenticity is not reduced on 
any level. 
[2] Annotations should expand from 
explanations and/or definitions of individual words/
phrases to posing of questions for prior knowledge 
activation and comprehension scaffolding as 
well. When annotations are intentionally aimed at 
individual lexical items, they should be done so in 
L1 as opposed to L2. 
[3] Captions should be supplied in key words 
rather than in full for optimal learning experiences. 
Perhaps, an experimental study is needed in the future 
to genuinely test the effect of these suggestions./. 
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