For international Foundation programme students, pronunciation problems can be a barrier to full participation in classroom activities once they progress to undergraduate courses. These difficulties can impede their integration to college life and affect their self-confidence, particularly if they are afraid of being misunderstood every time they attempt to make an oral contribution.
This paper reports on the use of student-generated screencasts as part of a reading programme in a level 6 Foundation English module for beginning Asian students. The aim of this intervention was to integrate the skills of writing, reading and presenting, focusing in particular on pronunciation. Screencasting has received little attention in language learning literature and, more specifically, the affordances of student-generated screen-casts have not been widely examined. In this case, students used Screencast-o-matic to create short recordings of their written reports on abridged English novels in preparation for a summative presentation. Students were then given individual paper-based feedback on these, combined with a generic feedback exercise in the form of a screencast of frequent pronunciation errors emerging from the recordings. Students then made use of this feedback in creating a new screencast for their book report and final presentation.
Students were positive in their evaluation of both this approach and the software, and a marked improvement in the quality of the final presentations, particularly in terms of pronunciation, was evident.
This approach offers a number of benefits for international students in their study of English. It facilitates the integration of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening. In particular, unlike most pronunciation activities, screencasting provides a strong visual element, which complements the oral and aural elements. In addition, it allows the learner’s individual pronunciation needs to be met in a personalised manner. It allows learners to evaluate their own pronunciation and unlimited opportunities to refine pronunciation attempts.
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Key Words: Screencasting; Student-generated screen-casts; Language learning; Foundation English Programme; Pronunciation; Feedback
