Language for Specific Purposes and Audio Description Tasks: A Case Study

Abstract

In the Foreign Language (FL) classroom, video description and dubbing have recently been introduced for the development of communicative skills in various types of didactic methods (Vermeulen and Ibáñez 2014, 2017; Talaván 2020; Ávila-Cabrera and Rodríguez-Arancón 2021). This paper offers an innovative didactic proposal of Audio Description (AD) in the English for Tourism (ET) classroom. It supports the hypothesis that authentic tasks enhance communicative skills in LSP (Language for Specific Purposes) education (Melnichuk et al. 2017). It presents a quasi-experimental study of student performance in two different productive tasks (writing and speaking). The study follows a Task-Based Learning (TBL) approach and addresses a group of 119 students within an undergraduate program of ET (B2 level) at a Spanish distance-education university (UNED). As a post-task, a twofold rubric, designed in a previous teaching project, scored and analyzed student writing and speaking responses to an AD script of a mute video about a touristic place of their choice. Results show that implementing an AD task in the LSP classroom had a positive effect on students’ marks in their final test. In addition, the number of students who completed the writing task was around 50% greater than those who completed the speaking task. Introducing ICT tools in the LSP classroom seems to be positive, and it will be argued that developing digital technologies, such as mobile apps, may be a necessary step to foster future professionals’ language performance and competences.