Student perceptions of transferable skills development through didactic audio description

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.