In today’s society that is filled with a variety of media and technology, social networking is a part of poeple’s life and the network community has become a component of our everyday community. In addition, the national standards of foreign language education requires to extend learning experience from the classroom to the home and community. It is not hard to understand that the application of media and technology in foreign language education has inevitably become a trend. YouTube, as a famous video watching website, is very popular among adolescents. I think it is a good idea to properly include YouTube in foreign language class.
Watching videos gives students’ a visual and audio support in learning a language. Since adolescents enjoy spending their leisure time online watching YouTube videos, then watching YouTube videos would be a form of learning that adolescents may not cause their antipathy. Without the limitation on only one source such as watching videotapes or movies, YouTube recommends similar videos according to your previous search. This feature allows students to explore more on the same topic. As for adolescents, they are experiencing self-awareness development. They have a strong desire to show up themselves or to perform their funny novel ideas so as to catch people’s attention and to build up their self-confidence. Therefore, I think it would be great to videotape the play that is created and acted out by the adolescent language learners’ own and then to share it on YouTube. This will not only stimulate adolescent learners’ enthusiasm for learning, but also allows them do what they want and like to do.
However, YouTube also have some disadvantages in adolescent language education. Language education requires students to develop their ability in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The application of YouTube in language education can not meet the reading and writing requirement. In addition, some videos may have advertisement before they were played or in the middle of the video. We have no option to opt out the advertisements and no choice to choose the advertisements we see. Even most of the advertisements are legal and proper to show to adults, but it still contains some teen inappropriate contents and we have no control on it. So I think the best way to avoid our students to be exposed to inappropriate content is that teacher select the videos used in class instead of the students who select the videos.
Compared with other media or technology, I think YouTube is a relatively safe and proper media to be used in foreign language educational setting for adolescents. It is a free website that people used almost everyday and it is one of the most popular public media in the United States.
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I agree that YouTube is a great resource for language acquisition! I’m trying to teach myself Spanish, and I watch many Spanish children’s videos on YouTube to learn basic language skills.
It’s a great idea to videotape students speaking foreign languages to go on YouTube. However, I think it still meets Common Core State Standards. First of all, you could have students write out ideas, or even a full script, before taping. Second of all, the ELA Standards have a “Speaking and Listening” section that include speech, oration, and performance, so this would help that, too. Ultimately, as someone who took French in college, I think reading and writing is the easiest part of learning a new language, and speaking and hearing it is the hardest part. If I had had more “fun” opportunities that required me to speak in class, I might have acquired it better! To this day, I can only read and write in French, even after two years of studying it.