AN AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA-BASED CURRICULUM FOR AN INTERMEDIATE GERMAN LANGUAGE COURSE: DESIGN, IMPLEMENTATION, AND ITS EFFECTS ON LISTENING COMPREHENSION

The digital age has profoundly changed the film industry and how consumers are able to access media. To foster language development, this mixed methods study takes advantage of this technological progress and investigates how an audiovisual media-based curriculum can be designed for and implemented in an intermediate German language course. In this context, its effects on students’ listening comprehension competence are analyzed.

A qualitative action research (AR) approach was pursued to systematically reflect and act upon the curriculum-related components of the project by taking instructor’s observations and students’ feedback into consideration. A review of the AR cycles concluded the film-based curriculum to be successful in an intermediate language learning context. It provided insight in students’ attitude towards chosen genres, the appropriateness of selected themes, audiovisuals, and tasks as well as suggestions for how a subsequent course should be altered in future iterations. 

A quantitative analysis consisting of four listening assessments and two language proficiency tests was carried out to examine whether progress of students’ listening comprehension skills can be determined. A comparison of the four listening tests suggests an overall positive trend in class and individual performance. An ANOVA analysis indicates that the four tests were significantly different and that a linear trend exists. However, a negative trend was observed when comparing the A2 and B1 language proficiency test. 

In conclusion, a film-based curriculum serves as a promising pedagogical approach in an intermediate second language context. Furthermore, the field of SLA would benefit from further research on how the presented approach can be applied to other proficiency levels and/or if the explicit teaching of listening strategies could help students ease observed challenges pertaining to their listening comprehension skills.