Using Photo Story 3 to teach Chinese

Using Photo Story 3 to teach Chinese

Using Photo Story 3 to teach Chinese

Photo Story 3 is a Microsoft creation designed for creating slideshows on a computer. This software contains various features which can be used to put digital photos together to tell stories. The basic features include touch-up, crop, rotate or rearrange the digital photos selected. There are also some special features which can be used to make your slideshows more interesting such as adding special effects, soundtracks, personalised titles, captions and voice narration. I have used this software in my own teaching of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) and there are three phases involved:

1. Instructional Phase

First, tell students what to do by showing them the basic features and steps of applying Photo Story 3 which is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=92755126-a008-49b3-b3f4-6f33852af9c1&DisplayLang=e). Then, offer students some possible topics such as

"My family", "My hobbies", "A day in my life", "Introducing a famous person (historical or contemporary in a variety of professions)" or "Introducing a city or a local historical landmark", etc. Next, set the assessing criteria including (1) originality of the story; (2) interesting of the content; (3) appropriateness of the photos and background music selected; (4) accuracy of the captions used; and (5) the standard of the overall presentation. Finally, set the due date and determine the submission method, e.g., to Teacher's Submission Folder via school's Intranet or via email or Bluetooth, etc.

2. Practice Phase

Give students sufficient time to complete the story. The working environment could either be in the language lab/classroom at school or at students' own home with an Internet access. The time allocated could vary based on students' language abilities and computer skills. Normally, a 10-photo story would require 2 contact periods of 40-minute duration each. The teacher's role at this stage is to answer questions or offer suggestions to facilitate the learning. When reaching the editing stage, students could be asked to edit their stories individually or in pairs with or without teacher's help. If they work at home, they are asked to record the time spent and help sought when completing their stories.

3. Consolidating Phase

I have tried three things with my students at this stage in order to consolidate their learning: (i) In-class viewing and commenting; (ii) Error analysis; and (iii) Rewriting of the story. After marking all the stories submitted, I have allocated one contact period to show the class their photo stories together and commented on the merits and shortcomings of each project. The variation of this could be that you ask your students to rate their own photo stories while viewing in class and then have a class discussion about their projects. I have also re-typed the error sentences occurring in the captions in the students' photo stories and ask students to correct the error sentences individually and then discuss these errors in class as a follow-up activity. Finally, I have asked students to rewrite their stories by taking into consideration of the errors they made previously in order to ensure linguistic accuracy. An extension could be to ask students to rewrite their stories by using more 4-character idioms in Chinese to relabel their photo stories.

All these techniques are motivating to my CSL students and you might like to try them in your classes.

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