I’ll be your eyes. Does audiodescription make a difference to learners’ speech?

Audiodescription as a didactic tool in foreign language learning (FLL) is an innovative area that has a significant potential for language learners. This mode of audiovisual translation (AVT) is used for making video content accessible to blind and visually impaired viewers. An additional narration is inserted to describe information transmitted visually, converting images into words. Over the last few years, research on this AVT mode is increasingly getting attention, yet not as much as it deserves. A handful of studies have looked at the general benefits (Martínez Martínez, 2012), (Gajek & Szarkowska, 2013), (Ibañez Moreno & Vermeulen, 2014) or at specific skills that can be enhanced with this practice (Ibañez Moreno & Vermeulen, 2013) and (Calduch & Talaván, 2018). However, there are only a couple of small-scale projects that have focused on learners’ oral production (Talaván & Lertola, 2016) and (Navarrete, 2018). In order to fill in this gap, a recent study has examined the impact of active audiodescription activities in spontaneous speech, assessing fluency, pronunciation and intonation features of participants.

This paper will present its methodological framework, including the mixed-methods strategies used for data collection to allow triangulation of results. The study was carried out with university students over a 3-year period, and it followed a cyclical procedure in accord with action research principles. The lessons learnt from each cycle were applied to improve the reliability of the data collected in each subsequent stage. Although its focus evolved with objectives and research questions, it culminated with the central experiment, which successfully responded to the final questions. Analysis of data and discussion of the most relevant results obtained will also be presented.