French_Culture_Tutor

Previous research shows that video viewing (a frequent activity in language courses) is more effective when students receive guidance. We investigate how to support students in an on-line environment in acquiring cultural knowledge and intercultural competence by viewing clips from feature films from the target culture. We test the effectiveness of a set of attention-focusing techniques (pause-predict-ponder), some of which have been shown to be effective in other contexts, with ICCAT, a simple tutor that enhances an existing classroom model for the development of intercultural competence. In order to evaluate this instructional method, an in vivo experiment was conducted in the French LearnLab course. Students were randomly assigned to conditions in which we compared ICCAT versions with and without attention-focusing techniques. We found that the addition of the pause-predict-ponder seemed to assist students in acquiring cultural knowledge components and significantly increased students’ ability to reason from an intercultural perspective.