Teaching and Transcribing

I discovered an amazing source today about the use of transcribing techniques to teach English to non-native speakers.  The article, entitled "Learning from the Transcripts of an Oral Communication Task" by T. Lynch,  talked about the practicality and effectiveness of using transcribing activities in classrooms.  The reason I am dedicating a whole post to this article is because of how it answers so many questions I have recently asked (and should have asked) about my project.

The article analyzes a study completed concerning the effectiveness of using recorded oral practice in classrooms and having the students later transcribe the recorded conversations.  This is exciting for me because the study showed that having students transcribe their own conversations greatly increased the attention that they gave to the language and how it works.  In other words, transcribing is a wonderfully effective strategy for language acquisition.

This is splendid news!  That means that the thing that I was dreading as taking up the most time (transcribing) will actually help me to achieve the thing that I wanted most out of my trip to Mexico (that is, bettering my Spanish skills).  Not only that, but the two methods that were tested gave me some great ideas about how I can be more accurate, and get the most language learning, out of my transcribing time.

The study was conducted to measure (in part) the difference in effectiveness between two methods of transcribing.  For both of the methods the students will complete a first-time transcript of the oral practice, but for the first method the students will come back to their transcript and edit it along with their peers, paying special attention to words and sections that were problematic during the first attempt.  This methods is intended to greatly increase the attention that the students will give to the language and require them to look more closely at words at familiar to them.  The second methods requires more teacher involvement, meaning that the teachers would provide their version of the transcripts for the students to learn from.

The study showed that the first, peer-review method, provided more long-term learning for the students.  Which is great, because it gave me the great idea to find a friend that I can have help work with me through the tricky sections of the audio recordings.  This article has taught me things that will help me to not only improve my Spanish, but the methods therein will provide assistance during my transcribing periods, granting relief during some of the most challenging portions of my project.