Towards integrating television materials into english teaching and learning at the National University of Rwanda: an exploratory case study of the second year english course

Chapter 1: General Introduction

1.1 Background to the study

Television remains a channel of communication that continues to attract a large part of the public. However, today the world is also undergoing a spirit of global competition where television is not the only form of electronic media. There is continuous development of more sophisticated technology. This is probably due to the users' demands for innovative applications. Here one can mention, for instance, some multimedia forms such as the World Wide Web, CD-Roms, videoconferencing, to name but a few.

Despite the development in the world of media mentioned above, television remains an affordable type of medium in poor nations, due to its increasing cheapness and easy accessibility. Unlike many other media, television can be viewed by an unlimited number of people simultaneously. One of the major challenges developing nations face could be to direct this medium into an approach that seeks a more active viewer-oriented perspective rather than a passive consumer-oriented one. The central point here is that television should, besides being an entertaining tool, educate the viewing public. As long as the latter can afford or access some facilities such as television sets and video equipment, television could play a dynamic role in this process.

While television has proven lucrative for advertisers and commercial companies, its input has yet to be fully exploited and embraced for use in schooling. The primary challenge for twenty-first century education in developing countries, Rwanda included, should ideally be to apply the tools of modern communication, starting from the most accessible (i.e. television), to the academic and cultural development of young people. For instance, as Marshall and Werndly (2002: 61) outline, television is a medium organised around rhythms of speech, not writing, and around accompanying visual signification such as the gesture, appearance and demeanour of speakers. It is within this framework that this research undertakes to investigate how Rwandan education stakeholders can develop practical ways of using television with its own potentialities, form and content to meet the demands of developing foreign languages, with English being at the centre due to its increasingly important role in the world as a language of wider communication.

The question one may ask oneself is the following: why should lecturers and learners of English have recourse to television as a learning resource? The answer can be found in the fact that television has the power of involving one's senses (i.e. sight and hearing) and the link between them facilitates learning. This relationship is reinforced by the visual element (i.e. the motion, the colourful setting) accompanied by the language. All these factors bring an overall meaning to the topic under discussion on television. To supplement the above assumptions, Bertram et.al (2001:97) present us a picture of educational opportunities offered by television. They claim that television is essentially a visual medium that tells its stories in images. Furthermore, television provides educators with opportunities. This is how they put it:

First we must find ways to ensure that learners view television, videos and films actively. Second, we must use the power provided by the `completeness' of the medium- the combination of explanation and visual illustration (2001:97).

Since this study explores how television as instructional medium can be integrated with EFL learning and teaching, in the following section I provide the background to English in education in Rwanda and to the use of audiovisual media in the teaching of languages. I first provide a view of the role of languages in general and that of English in particular at the National University of Rwanda (NUR). Then I present what has been done at the NUR in terms of using audiovisuals in the language classroom. I briefly examine the EFL/ESL situation in Rwanda and a context that has influenced the language educational policy in use at the NUR.

In the period after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the country inherited a particular linguistic background as a result of an influx of Rwandans who had been living outside their homeland. They all spoke Kinyarwanda as their mother tongue plus English or French, depending on whether the former country of exile was an English speaking state or not. Consequently, as Kagwesage (2001:2) explains, Kinyarwanda and French, which were previously [before 1994] used almost exclusively in all domains, were no longer enough to fulfil the communicative needs of all citizens. English had to be added to these languages of communication. Having gained a new status, it was then promoted to a national and an official language.

With regard to the role of foreign languages in education, it is worth mentioning that apart from French, that served many communicative purposes, English also acquired an important position in the Rwandan educational context. Mutwarasibo (2003:2-3) maintains that the current policy provides that Kinyarwanda (the country's main language) should be the language of teaching and learning in the first three years of primary education, while either French or English should take over in the next three years of primary school and the whole of secondary and tertiary education. At the NUR, it was until 1995, when studies resumed, that this language policy was adopted and implemented in higher institutions. The NUR was the first to put into practice this policy. All French-speaking students, also called `Francophones', registering at the university spend at EPLM (the school is known in French as Ecole Pratique des Langues Modernes or School of Modern Languages in English) a one year intensive English course whereas their counterparts, `Anglophones', learn French. After this initial training, both groups of students were allowed to study in either language as a medium of instruction or as a subject.

After this brief linguistic background of Rwanda, I now focus on the audiovisual situation in language teaching at the NUR. In 1970 the NUR established a Centre of Languages so that students were able to have English classes to become more proficient in the language. A language laboratory was built at the NUR for this purpose thanks to British technical assistance that was referred to as `British Overseas Voluntary Service'. The Language Centre was only operational until 1973 as the British assistance had come to its term. Therefore, the then Faculty of Arts overtook the running of the centre. The language laboratory continued to be used by the students of the Faculty of Arts in the department of English during their listening classes. Currently, language lecturers do not use these laboratories as the world is moving towards more practical and sophisticated technological materials such as audiovisual media like videos, television sets, etc.

Despite the current technological advancement in IT, the NUR still lags behind, partly because of the highly expensive infrastructure that modern materials require. Other possible factors may be the context of the teaching tradition that prevails at this institution. The learning process at the NUR is still content-based and the lecturer is still at the centre of the process. From my observation as an insider at the institution, I notice that the teaching emphasis is on competency and accuracy and fluency is ignored. There is a need for the promotion of participatory and learner-centred approaches. Using television materials in the language classroom for a lecturer is one way to foster this approach. Thus, this implies his^1(*) effort in supporting the development of interactive skills, group work skills etc. Under such learning conditions, learners can be given time to watch a variety of television programmes as part of their listening classes, for example.

Concerning the available audiovisual equipment at the NUR, the latter has at its disposal a number of television sets that the students and lecturers can use. Thus, those not using it should be asked why they have neglected this important aid to second language learning. This is the problem which this research addresses. As an employee at the NUR, I am aware that students in general spend most of their spare time in the main television hall watching different English channels. Now, how can lecturers take advantage of this to improve the teaching of English?

English teaching and learning by means of audiovisual materials is an area that has received attention in research worldwide but in Rwanda little has been researched about it in EFL/ESL. Only one thesis by Kabasha (2003) dealt with a related issue (ICT Applications in Effective Teaching and Learning of English as a Second Language at the National University of Rwanda). In fact, the EFL/ESL as a whole has been one of the fields to explore the value of audiovisual materials such as video and television as teaching and learning aids. In the next section, I deal with the primary reasons that prompted me to investigate this topic.

* ¹ The pronoun is used for the sake of neutrality in the mini thesis to refer to people whose gender is unknown.