Language Acquisition through exposure to hispanic telenovela: an excuse?

Ana Jovanovic
Marija Martic

ABSTRACT

Foreign telenovela viewers frequently justify engaging in their favorite leisure-time activity by citing its pedagogical value, namely an opportunity to learn Spanish. The purpose of this study was to investigate if acquisition does indeed occur and, if so, to what extent.

Participants were separated into two groups: 1) tele-novela viewers, fifteen native speakers of Serbian without formal in-struction in Spanish or prior residency in a Spanish speaking country,and 2) instructed learners, fifteen speakers of Serbian attendingSpanish courses at A1 and A2 levels (Council of Europe 2001), who did not have any exposure to Spanish language programming or prior residency in the target language country. An attempt was made toevaluate the participants’ receptive and productive language skills.Following the model of an on-line Spanish placement exam, a multiple choice test was designed with the lexicon taken from telenovela scripts. In addition, the participants were asked to complete a writtentranslation task. Final collection of the data was obtained throughsemi-structured interviews conducted in Spanish in order to evaluatethe participants’ spoken interaction and production skills.As expected, preliminary results show an advantage of in-structed learners over telenovela viewers in the language test. How-ever, while instructed learners generally had difficulties in the fluentproduction of spontaneous speech, most of the

telenovela viewers were able to participate actively in meaningful conversation at thelevel of A2 language learners. These results are surprising since the telenovela viewers did not have prior experience with the productiveuse of the Spanish language, and yet they were able to creatively en-gage in communication. Besides immediate implications for lan-guage instruction, further research on this subject may offer addi-tional insight on second language acquisition.

Key words:
language acquistion, communicative competence,Spanish, authentic video material



Me llamó inmediatamente la atención el título. El artículo tiene varios datos curiosos.

the impact and success of this genre is beyond any doubt, particularly since the late twentieth century. The extent of their popularity in Serbia may be measured by a number of different mini-series shown daily, approximately fifteen including reruns at the time this study was conducted (Politika TV Revija 2006).

1. al momento del estudio había 15 "telenovelas" (o repeticiones de éstas) exhibiendose en la televisión servia¿?
Cuando pienso en Servia o cualquier país de la ex-Yugoslavia, en los Balkanes, jamás se me hubiese ocurrido pensar en adictos al "conchalevale, chico" :) Aunque aclara que son telenovelas traídas desde la televisión española o portuguesa.

2. Uno de los hallazgos de las entrevistas fue que los "instructed learners" tendían a usar L1 cuando se estancaban (code switching?) lo que no sucedía con los "telenovela viewers".

Al llegar al final casi del paper pensé, bueno en realidad esto no prueba nada ya que hay muchísimos factores por los que los "telenovela viewers" obtuvieron esos resultados. Justo, también lo dicen las autoras. Y están pensando en lo mismo que yo, la motivación.

However, the performance of the telenovela viewers might be equally well explained by a higher motivational level, by the fact that this was their first time to communicate in Spanish so there was a sense of responsibility, or the like. Any interpretation is, of course, tentative and there is a clear need for more research on the subject. (p. 334)

No creo tener casos de alumnos que lleguen a primer año de universidad teniendo mejores competencias en inglés y que declaren que NO les gusta este idioma... a menos, claro que los alumnos hayan sido "forzados" a estudiar por estar en un colegio con alta exigencia, etc.
Recuerdo un caso en el que una alumna estuvotoda su vida en el mismo colegio en el que estudié yo, un colegio con alta exigencia en inglés, y realmente sabía lo mínimo... Pero ella declaraba que el inglés "no le gustaba"... se notaba que había una historia de fracaso/rechazo. Creo que ella constituía un excelente sujeto de estudio.

Según mi percepción, las autoras pretendían "desacreditar" la teoría de Krashen (aquisition/learning), pero terminaron sorprendidas con los resultados. Debo admitir que hasta yo me sorprendí un tanto con los resultados... y eso que mi "proyecto" se basa en la idea de que varios alumnos de alguna forma, que no es la escuela, adquieren inglés extra.

Ana Jovanovic, Marija Martic, Belgrade
In
INTERNATIONAL Conference The Romance Balkans (2006; Belgrad)
The Romance Balkans : collection of papers presented at the International
Conference The Romance Balkans, 4–6 November 2006
pgs. 319-338

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