The role of digital video media in second language listening ...

help clarify potentially ambiguous sections of spoken Japanese (Kevin, text unit 44).The presence of embedded text is much less frequent than either the display ofheadlines or captions. Mostly, this type of written text can be seen in establishingshots that focus on advertising billboards, traffic signs or other printed material thatare commonplace in the modern urban landscape (Biocca, 1991). Embedded textsalso appears in extreme close-up shots that are used to show the viewer details ofprinted materials such as letters, notes or newspapers (Arijon, 1976).The display of written text in any form, of course, influences listeningcomprehension (Rubin, 1995b). Ideally, its presence serves tofacilitatecomprehension by providing an ‘advanced organiser’ for the narrative at hand(Hanley, Herron & Cole, 1995). Potentially, however, written text may also act asbarrier to comprehension to those individuals who are unable to decode its meaningas in the case when complex or unfamiliar kanji characters and phrases appear(Jorden, 1992).The process of videotext analysisBased on media research techniques (Fields, 1988; Graddol, 1994; Grimes, 1990),analysis of the news broadcasts was conducted in three stages.The first stage of the analytical process involved creating a diagram of the visualnarrative structure for each videotext. Following Graddol (1994), each node in thesetree-like figures was made to represent a distinct shot. Each of these shots were thenclustered by scenes and result in an overall view of the structure of visual elements inthe news broadcasts.The second stage of analysis began with the construction of a table that listed thescene number, a brief description, a ‘frame grab’ of the shot which appeared at thebeginning of each scene, and the duration of the scene. Shot types were identified on77