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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 (2015) 364 368

4th WORLD CONFERENCE ON EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY RESEARCHES, WCETR-

2014

English Vocabulary in Video Clips on Travel and Tourism

Jaroslav Kacetla*, Blanka Frydrychova-Klimovaa
a
University of Hradec Kralove, Rokitanskho 62,500 03 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic

Abstract

Information and communication technologies are an inseparable part of current university education. The authors have been
teaching students of Management of Travel and Tourism at the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The Management
of Travel and Tourism students need to be aware of currently used specialized vocabulary in their field of study. Since 2010, their
teachers have been using in their language classes video clips from the Internet. Watching video clips and studying the language
used in them improves their command of currently used English for tourism. The purpose of this contribution is to inform about
an upcoming study of the language used in video clips focusing on travel and tourism, whose transcripts will be analyzed by
means of the British National Corpus. The method used is document analysis, more specifically word frequency analysis. So far,
the authors have used about 80 English-language video clips on travel and tourism in their classes. The number of words used in
them reaches about 40,000. The outcome of this research should be a list of the most frequently used words, phrases and idioms
as they appear in the above mentioned video clips. The benefits of this research should include the basis for teaching travel and
tourism vocabulary, grammar structures, or stylistic variations. Another outcome will be a specialized dictionary of professional
collocations and terms in the field of travel and tourism.
2015
2015TheTheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by by Elsevier
Elsevier Ltd.Ltd.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center.
Keywords: language teaching; word frequency analysis; travel and tourism

1. Introduction

Currently, information and communication technologies (ICT) have already asserted themselves in almost all
human activities, including university education. In foreign language classes, students often watch video clips as
there are a lot of freely available online sources of suitable and authentic materials. Several authors like Bull and

* Jaroslav Kacetl. Tel.: +420 -493 332 319.

E-mail address: jaroslav.kacetl@uhk.cz

1877-0428 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Research and Education Center.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.788
 Jaroslav Kacetl and Blanka Frydrychova-Klimova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 (2015) 364 368 365

Bell (2010), Muniandy and Veloo (2011), and others recommend various sources. Mullen and Wedwick (2008)
praise particularly YouTube for its potential to provide quick access to a vast database of video clips and maintain
that these materials enhance almost any classroom lesson. In a similar vein, Trier (2007) draws attention to the new
and rapidly expanding trend of vidcasting and sees the powerful pedagogical potential of YouTube. Nevertheless,
there are other sources, too. Useful websites where teachers can find suitable video clips include: Deutsche Welle,
Discovery Education, Google Video, Hulu (not available in the Czech Republic), MSN Soapbox, Netflix (not
available in the Czech Republic), NextVista, OneWorldTV, Real English, TeacherTube, Yahoo! Video, and
YouTube.
There are a lot of authors who do research and write about using video clips in education. For instance, Canning-
Wilson (2000) lists advantages of using video in class: it provides visual stimuli and contextual clues, generates
prediction, helps learners to predict information and infer ideas, allows the learner to see authentic body rhythm and
speech rhythm in second language discourse. Moreover, Canning-Wilson adds that her large-scale survey proves that
foreign language students like learning that employs video clips. McKinnon (2011?) suggests a lot of various
activities including pre-viewing, while-viewing and post-viewing tasks that can be done in class. akir (2006)
suggests, for instance, active viewing, freeze framing and prediction, silent viewing, sound on and vision off activity,
repetition and role-play, reproduction activity, dubbing activity, and follow-up activity. In other words, teachers
must always bear in mind that video content should always serve an instructional goal. Therefore, students need
prior instruction about what to look and listen for and the teacher should carefully think about how to use emergent
technologies in order to effectively help students improve with respect to their field of study.

2. Language Corpora in Language Teaching

Another aspect of current language teaching, which uses ICT, is the possibility to study real life language by
means of using a corpus-based approach. Corpora are computerized databases of authentic texts, including
transcripts of spoken utterances, taken as a representative sample of a given language or its variety. They are used
for linguistic research as well as for teaching purposes. Flowerdew (2012, p. 3) characterizes a corpus as follows:

x authentic, naturally occurring data;

x assembled according to explicit design criteria;
x representative of a particular language or genre; and
x designed for a specific linguistic or socio-pragmatic purpose.

There are various types of corpora. One of them, the British National Corpus (BNC), is a general corpus
containing a large variety of spoken and written language. Klimova (2014) maintains that although the corpus-
linguistic approach is suitable for testing linguistic hypotheses, for describing language features as well as for
teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), EFL teachers as well as English textbooks still ignore the use of
corpora.
At present, however, EFL teachers can use a lot of software programs for analyzing different corpora. The authors
use Sketch Engine (2003), which was developed at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech
Republic. Sketch Engine can search several dozen different corpora. One of its most frequently used tools is the
concordancer, which shows any word or phrase in context so that one can see how it is actually used in real
language.
The authors teach English for specific purposes at the Faculty of Informatics and Management (FIM), University
of Hradec Kralove (UHK), the Czech Republic. Among other courses, there is a course of English for students of
Management of Travel and Tourism. Not only do these students go for foreign internships, e.g. to geoparks 1 in

1
Geopark is defined by http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/geopark as A UNESCO-designated area containing one or
more sites of particular geological importance, intended to conserve the geological heritage and promote public awareness of it, typically through
tourism.
366 Jaroslav Kacetl and Blanka Frydrychova-Klimova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 (2015) 364 368

England, Portugal, or even Nicaragua, but they are also supposed to pursue international careers in travel and
tourism. Consequently, they need to be aware of currently used specialized English travel and tourism vocabulary,
grammar structures, and stylistic variations. This can also be achieved by watching and studying authentic materials
available on the Internet. The authors have been teaching Management of Travel and Tourism students using video
clips from the Internet since 2010. They have gathered a considerable amount of material, which they are going to
utilize for creating new teaching aids, including a specialized dictionary of professional collocations and terms in the
field of travel and tourism. This contribution aims to describe what has been done and remains to be done.

3. Gathering Material for Subsequent Research

Back in 2010, FIM moved to a new modern building, where all classrooms are equipped with modern
technologies. Language teachers therefore started to use the Internet in class. Among other things, they started to
work with video clips focusing on travel and tourism. They found out that various websites offer interesting video
clips. In the end, Deutsche Welle (DW) was chosen as the primary source. Its website contains hundreds of video
clips, including the Euromaxx City series presenting European cities and many tourist destinations. There are also
available other series, including Great Gardens, Holiday Challenge, Market Tales, or Regional Success Stories.
These video clips are in English (and German), and introduce interesting information about various facets of life,
particularly about culture, history, politics, and institutions.
Based on the authors' teaching experience and literature review of articles focusing on using video in language
classrooms, the most suitable format of worksheets for Management of Travel and Tourism students was created. It
contains the video clip title and its internet address, then a short introduction, key vocabulary section, and questions.
The resulting one-page worksheet (without key) is printer-friendly. Teachers, nonetheless, use a two-page version
with key and additional notes. At the moment, the authors have collected worksheets to about one hundred English
language video clips for Management of Travel and Tourism students.
Having used these video clips for more quite a long time, the authors have had representative feedback from their
students. A questionnaire survey is carried out at the end of every academic year among second-year Management of
Travel and Tourism students to find out their views on using video clips in and outside class. By the end of the
second year, Management of Travel and Tourism students should have seen about twenty video clips in their
language classes. Moreover, they should self-study using the textbooks English Listening Exercises (Kacetl, 2011),
which contains twenty worksheets for Management of Travel and Tourism students and another twenty for students
of other specializations. Another textbook containing fifty worksheets for Management of Travel and Tourism
students is being prepared and it should be published by the end of 2014. There is also a similar textbook
Hrbungen (Fiserova, 2011) for those who study German.
Recently, Management of Travel and Tourism students have started to prepare the above mentioned worksheets
themselves. Not only does it seem to be a good substitute for missing classes but students can determine on their
own what they want to watch and may also come up with new ways of using video clips. There have already
occurred several improvements, including discovering another very good source of video clips, BookingHunter.com,
where one can find dozens of short video clips about must-see attractions in cities around the world. Most
significantly, however, students have started writing (and providing the authors with) electronic versions of video
clip transcripts, which make up a bulk of material that can be used in many ways.

4. Methods

The above mentioned transcripts represent real and current English for tourism. The authors plan a study of the
language used in video clips focusing on travel and tourism. The transcripts will be analyzed by means of Sketch
Engine through the BNC. The method used will be document analysis, more specifically word frequency analysis.
Authors have been preparing the electronic version of about 100 transcripts. All transcribed video clips must focus
on travel and tourism. Therefore, the authors decided to choose only clips introducing a tourist destination or a
tourist attraction, usually a country, island, region, city, town or village or another place of interest for tourists. All
 Jaroslav Kacetl and Blanka Frydrychova-Klimova / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 182 (2015) 364 368 367

chosen video clips are produced by the only source, namely Deutsche Welle, Germany's international broadcaster,
and their length is more or less the same, usually between 4 and 5 minutes. The transcripts almost always contain
between 500 and 600 words. So far, the authors have chosen about 80 English-language video clips. The estimated
number of words used in all of them together reaches about 45,000. However, the number of chosen video clip will
increase as the authors aim at about 100 video clips, containing around 60,000 words. The first step to be done is to
make the electronic transcripts of all chosen video clips. Unfortunately, from 2010 to 2013 no transcript was written
in the electronic version. Presently, the authors are cooperating with their students who should help them rewrite the
existing handwritten transcripts into the electronic version.
As soon as these electronic transcripts exist, the authors are planning to use the Sketch Engine
(the.sketchengine.co.uk). In order to use this website, one needs to become its user with a unique login and
password. The user can create new corpus, into which they can add files. The authors will create a corpus, e.g.
Travel and Tourism, which will contain the text of the above mentioned transcripts. It will then be examined against
the BNC, which contains approximately a 100-million-word text reflecting a variety of written and spoken British
English from a wide range of sources. As video clip transcripts represent spoken English, it does not make any sense
to investigate punctuation or spelling. The authors would like to compare the use of specialized travel and tourism
vocabulary and specific grammatical features in the video transcripts in comparison to the BNC. Furthermore, they
would like to compile a list of the most frequently used words, phrases and idioms as they appear in the video clips
about travel and tourism.

4. Conclusion

The benefits of this research should include the basis for teaching specialized travel and tourism vocabulary,
grammar structures, or stylistic variations. Another outcome will be a specialized dictionary of professional
collocations and terms in the field of travel and tourism. As Barlow (2002) emphasizes (cf. Frydrychova Klimova
2014), EFL teachers can enormously benefit from the application of the corpus-based approach in three main areas:
syllabus design (to meet students needs; to determine what language items should be taught); materials development
(creating exercises based on real examples to help students discover features of actual language use); and classroom
activities (students themselves can use corpora and increase their autonomy).
To sum up, EFL teachers should expose their students to real life language usage. The corpus-based approach
helps them to do it meaningfully and in accordance with students needs. Frequency wordlists can help students as
well as teachers discover useful phrases, idioms, and collocations. All these things may further increase the benefit
that comes from using ICT in foreign language classes.

References

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