Abstract
Didactic audio description (DAD) refers to the use of active audio description (AD) tasks where students generate the AD text themselves. In foreign language teaching, DAD has been used to improve linguistic and oral competences, integrated and intercultural skills, media literacy, mediation, or accessibility awareness, with positive results. This article explores students’ perceptions about active AD to promote transferable skills development through data gathered from a series of two experiments implemented at the University of Manchester between 2018 and 2020. Specifically, it explores (i) whether participants perceived an improvement in their transferable skills, and (ii) in which specific skills sub-sets they did so. Quantitative data show high perceptions of transferable skills development (especially decision making, summarizing, and communicative skills) even when perceptions of the usefulness of AD to foster linguistic skills were low. Qualitative data show that the skills range where participants perceived improvement was broader than predicted, as responses to open-ended questions mentioned skills not foregrounded in closed questions, such as integrated skills, metalinguistic skills, mediation, and accessibility awareness. This suggests that active DAD tasks could be useful in diverse settings to promote a holistic learning experience where students simultaneously develop linguistic and non-linguistic abilities, and where accessibility and inclusion are at the forefront.
Keywords
didactic audio description; transferable skills; student perceptions; didactic audiovisual translation; accessibility awareness
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Source: Author [Description] Image shows a screenshot of the EPQ1 Google Forms questionnaire showing Q11 and the five multiple choice response items. Contents mentioned in the body text. [End of description].
Source: Author [Description] Image shows a pie chart representing the selection rates for each of the Q11 response items. Contents mentioned and analyzed in the body text. [End of description].
Source: Author [Description] Image shows a screenshot of the EPQ1I Google Forms questionnaire showing Q10 (DAD usefulness) and the two response items object of analysis. Contents mentioned in the body text. [End of description].
Source: Author [Description] Image shows a clustered column chart with response numbers and selection rates for each scale value in Q10 (DAD usefulness) for the two response items selected. Contents mentioned in the body text. [End of description].
Source: Author [Description] Image shows a screenshot of the EPQ1 Google Forms questionnaire showing Q4 (learning progress) and the response items provided. Contents mentioned in the body text. [End of description].
Source: Author [Description] Image shows a screenshot of the EPQI1 Google Forms questionnaire showing Q5 (learning progress) and the selected response items. Contents mentioned in the body text. [End of description].
Source: Author [Description] Image represents the connection between AD difficulties perceived by participants and sets of skills reported to have been developed through the DAD task. The upper half shows a table where rows 3 and 4 provide the selection rates for the most-chosen AD difficulties in EPQ1 and EPQ2, respectively, with one AD difficulty per column (“content selection”, “word choice”, “idiomaticity”, and “fitting into dialogue gaps” in columns 2 to 5). The bottom half shows skills sub-sets in boxes, placed under the relevant columns depending on the difficulty to which they are associated, and grouped by larger skills sets: “decision making”, “mediation skills” and “critical thinking” are grouped within “professional skills”; “communicative skills” and “visual accessibility awareness”, within “needs awareness” and “conversational skills”; all of them plus “summarizing/paraphrasing” within “integrated skills” and “metalinguistic thinking”. Data and contents explained in body text. [End of description].