For my course project, I chose to create a QuickTime Movie to be used for introducing and initiating drill of the present subjunctive in Spanish.

WHY

Eclectic methodologist that I consider myself to be, I have always greatly valued materials and technique derived from the old "methode audiovisuelle"/"St. Cloud" method for introducing and initiating drill of both grammatical as well as semantic/pragmatic teaching points.

The essential component of this method which I have used over the years is based on the old filmstrip visual which is accompanied by a tape: as the filmstrip is replayed, the student progressively reconstructs the narrative or dialogue, thereby producing the pattern while giving more thought to the meaning that the picture depicts than the language item per se. I have found this technique to be extremely effective and productive, especially for introducing a language objective such as the subjunctive where one wishes to present the pattern as meaningfully as possible and immediately get the students producing the pattern, in a way that is both mechanical yet meaningful, while spending no time at first on translation or analysis. The filmstrip enables the student to "audiolingually" begin mechanical production from the very start, while doing so in a semantically rich context beyond anything audiolingualism ever gave its ­shall we say?- victims. The Europeans were way ahead of the Americans during the audiovisual heyday, having students encoding meaning based on visual cues from the very beginning of presentation of new material, while the audiolingualists were still cuing the parroting of disjointed/semantically dead material.

Visually-cued drill eventually found its way into materials generated this side of the ocean, though few give credit to its European precursor. In terms of Spanish, Terrell's "Natural Approach" relied heavily on the use of this technique (as well as TPR, etc.). When picture strips are used, however, they require the teacher's reading of the script and/or are supported by textual (printed) cues; no recorded audio material is provided.

This is precisely the sort of material I myself have been generating for years. My familiarity with the European method is restricted to ESL/EFL materials ­especially Longman's First Things First- and French materials ( Alliance Francaise) [all circa 1970]. I have never had a pool of useful Spanish-oriented materials to draw upon.

The materials I've produced over the years are what I call "Picture Practice Sheets"(PPS), and are the best I've been able to do. They combine my primitive artwork (which actually the students do find somewhat cute) with printed word cues; I provide personal renditions of the audio script at the beginning (which I can do as I am a bilingual native speaker), and then students often use a written text which they progressively cover (I provide laminated cover cards to be used throughout the year for this purpose). The students progressively eliminate the printed script/cues and reach the point where they can reconstruct the entire passage. All this practice is done in pairs, students having been trained to monitor and help each other. Even when grammar is being introduced and drilled, I try to create drills that simulate dialogue to a greater or lesser extent. I also try to inject as much naturalness as possible, with idiomatic expressions, and I try to give the strip some humorous touches. Because I have created the drill to be as interactive (simulating communication) as possible, the final stage of practice with such a picture strip is the student creation of an analogous personalized version, and then performance before the class of either the original or the personalized form of the strip.

That is in a nutshell the lesson plan surrounding the material. Now just imagine something better than a "Picture Practice Sheet". Imagine if there could be continuous (though progressively phased-out) audio of the native speaker version with ongoing input of the correct grammar. Just imagine minimal printed cues. Just imagine something jazzier than la profesora's hokey artwork. Imagine everything re-playable at the hit of a button.

IMAGINE A QUICKTIME MOVIE! I was "blown away" at the possibility of creating my own filmstrips, which students could work on at their own pace on a computer, and/or which could be projected on a classroom screen. Just imagine pairs working on computer in a lab on something interactive which turns progressively into pairs creating and performing their own narratives/dialogue.

WHAT

I decided to create a MUCUED = MOVIE-CUED DRILL/DIALOGUE for introducing/initiating drill of the present subjunctive, based on an old PPS I've found very effective over the years.

The mucued presents Paco, about to leave for the University, and his very worried mother. They engage in a dialogue in which she expresses "Ojala que + subjunctive" regarding an ­AR, an ­ER and then an ­IR verb ("estudies bastante", "no bebas mucho", and "no vivas con una chica"); he responds to each concern with a reassuring indicative statement, culminating in the ridiculous "Pero mama, !yo vivo con Ud.!". A complete run of the dialogue is the first, presentation phase, segment of the mucued.

The next segment begins with a text instruction --"Ahora, tu eres Paco"; the mucued proceeds as before, only this time allowing a sound blank with space for the student to respond in the indicative. In this manner, the student is passively exposed to the subjunctive once again, while engaging with the material by producing familiar indicative statements.

The third segment elicits subjunctives from the student --"Ahora, tu eres la mama", while providing text reinforcement: in addition to the visual cue for the subjunctive, the word "ESTUDIES" appears during the sound blank. I was never able to get beyond producing the first two frames of this segment, and then they were mistakenly lost. That was as far as I was able to produce in the time alloted for the course.

A fourth segment would have had the visual cues followed by sound blanks with the correct audio version afterwards. The final segment would have been two frames, each consisting of the character's picture (one frame for Paco, one frame for la mama) and all the visual cues, with instructions to recreate the entire dialogue with a partner (the person at the next computer!). A complete audio version would be available for checking.

HOW

I first recorded my audio movie. I then went to the clip-art websites (University of Victoria and Altavista especially) and found the graphics I needed. I saved each of these graphics and gave them code-labels (letters of the alphabet). I was then shown that I needed to draft a "story-board", mapping out my mucued frame by frame, which I did, for a total of 50 frames! I then created text movies, also labeled, and with my story-board was able to code the contents of each of the frames. Production then began; great help was needed from the language lab staff (I imposed on everybody, for which I am both apologetic and extremely grateful), but I did actually learn the cut and paste technique and was able to do it myself, finally in a fairly automatic way. I was able to produce somewhere over 20 frames. For the last quarter or so of frames, I was also able to learn to use "Movie ­ Get Help ­ Adjust", and fix my cut-and-paste up to my liking; I had hoped to go back to the earlier frames and fix them as well (filling out matting, etc.), but was never able to do so.

This was an invaluable experience in so many ways. First of all, as I expressed to our instructor, this was my immersion --yea, nose-dive (or belly-flop!)-- into the world of computers altogether (I had never been to a web-site before!); I found the course extremely effective for me personally, and fun to boot. Which leads to my second point: what had been originally a sense of professional duty motivating me turned into a real excitement. This excitement came from producing something which I feel is truly an enhancement of something already pedagogically sound --thus, pedagogy driving technology, and not the other way around. The rich audio-visual quality that QuickTime Movies enable significantly upgrades materials I find powerfully effective, and the computer modality enhances their individualized utilization as well. I felt that the mucued I was working on was a prototype for many such other materials I would like to produce. I also hope to return to the language lab to complete this project, and will be acquiring my own computer capabilities. I would then like to inquire about the appropriateness of copyrighting my work.

I wish to thank all the parties involved in making this opportunity possible for me, with special thanks to our instructor, Claire B. Siskin, and to those enormously patient young men in the lab, Dave Dubas and Eric Riemer. THANKYOU!!