Readability and clarity: Measuring the improvement of written production in L2 through didactic audio description

Abstract

The technological development of recent decades has led to the flourishing of new methodologies for teaching foreign languages such as didactic audiovisual translation (hereinafter, DAT) with the aim of improving communicative skills (Talaván, 2019). The aim of the present study is to determine the impact of the DAT methodological framework on the development of written production through audio description. The research methodology follows a quasi-experimental design and is quantitative in nature. The research was carried out in a sample of 52 experimental subjects who completed a complete audio-description sequence in six didactic units. An ad hoc instrument was used to measure written production, assessing the lexical diversity, readability and metadiscourse markers of the texts produced by the participants. Preliminary results indicate a significant improvement in the clarity of the written texts, possibly due to the use of condensation and reduction strategies used in TAD.