Books, Pictures and Conversations: Using Bilingual Multimedia Storybooks to Develop Language Awareness

Abstract

The advent of multimedia technology provides many new opportunities for accelerating learning in a range of situations, including language teaching. This paper describes the work of Fabula, a multinational, multidisciplinary project funded by the European Commission. It focuses, in particular, on the evaluation of a bilingual multimedia storybook with primary school children (aged 6-10) in both Welsh- and English-medium settings in South Wales. It explores interesting insights on language preferences, learning strategies, and hypotheses about the way that language works through the spontaneous comments offered by pairs of children using the software. It locates the use of multimedia technology in research on language awareness, and argues for the positive effects and potential of such resources.