New landscapes in higher education: audio description as a multilayered task in FL teaching

Abstract

Today, higher education (HE) faces new challenges, such as incorporating consideration of diversity and inclusion into its operations. Such challenges, many of which are part of strategic institutional plans, offer teachers an opportunity to introduce new practices in the classroom. In this paper, we look at introducing language students to the task of audio description (AD)–that is, making visual content available to blind and visually impaired people by verbal means. We first present a framework for evaluating the learning that might derive from such an activity in the context of FL study, and then use this framework to evaluate a sequence of five tasks undertaken with Irish learners of Spanish. The tasks provided opportunities for the students to reflect on the communication needs of blind and visually impaired people and to understand how these could be addressed effectively in AD. The students practised AD in various contexts: both ‘improvised’ or ‘spontaneous’ AD as well as more carefully prepared AD, and undertaking AD in both the L1 (English) and the FL (Spanish). The pedagogic approach investigated here was inherently multidisciplinary and aimed to help learners become self-reflecting agents and mediators in their L1 and FL.