Integration of ICT significantly increases the possibilities of the educational process and extends the boundaries of the educational sphere as a whole. Publicly available resources, such as e-mail, blogs, forums, online applications, video hosting sites, can serve as the basis for building open learning and education. Informational educational technologies of learning foreign languages are in the focus of this study. The article represents the results of theoretical analysis of content on the subject of its personal- and didactic-definite orientation, as well as some aspects of the practical use of commonly used YouTube video materials in the process of teaching German as the first or second foreign language in higher education, namely at the pedagogical university. Taking into account the practical experience of using the materials of several relevant thematic YouTube channels with a fairly wide constant audience, a concise didactic analysis of their product is presented and recommendations on converting video content into methodological material in the framework of practical course of German language by future teachers are offered. Due to the suggested recommendations, the following tasks can be solved: enrichment of the vocabulary; semantization of phraseological units, constant figures of speech, cliché; development of pronunciation skills; expansion of linguistic competence; improving listening and speaking skills; increasing motivation to learn, etc.
Information and communication technologies, which are gradually integrating into education, expand its boundaries and create additional opportunities for the educational process. The gradual development of open learning and education is based on the latest ___________________ Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). information technologies and open resources, among which web services are particularly appealing in recent times, which allow you to download and view videos in your browser.
YouTube [
Kedoo [
As of April 2, 2018, 72,466,260 videos were found in general request “learning German language”, that was formulated by four languages, namely: 2 860 – in Ukrainian, 13 400 – in Russian, 1,750,000 – in German and 70,700 000 – in English. You can find videos of different specializations on YouTube. Table 1 summarizes the information of the orientation of the authors of the numerous channels of video materials, which are offered to everybody, who is interested in learning German as a foreign language.
However, the issue about the effectiveness of the use of widely used video materials in the process of learning a foreign language, in particular German, in a universities, remains open-ended. by the type of speech – lexical trainer activity – grammar trainer – trainer for improving pronunciation – listening and / or reading by means and forms of – based upon real / educational videos study – in the dialogues – by means of exercises – based upon stories – by films – “on the street” – with music 3
Analysis of last researches and publications worldwide indicates an increase of the number of authors who devote their works to the problems of using YouTube in teaching foreign languages. The highest level of interest is shown in learning English as a foreign language. This is due to the status of this language in the modern world as lingua franca.
The subject covers a wide range of issues. In particular, Henriette Arndt, Robert
Woore aim to compare the processes of forming the vocabulary of the second language
as a result of interaction with two network media: written blog posts and video blogs.
In this analysis the level of assimilation of various aspects of lexical knowledge
(spelling, semantic and grammatical) was a subject [
Antoro Sunu Dwi explores the use of ICTs, including YouTube, as key tools for creating training materials in order to support distance learning and language learning [1].
The experimental study of Iranian scholars Souzanzan Rozi and Bagheri Mohammad
Sadegh is concerned with the problem of perceiving English as a foreign language in
the context of expediency of ICTs use, in particular YouTube, during individual
learning [
A group of Brazilian researchers [5], having analyzed the impact of some digital resources on the quality of teaching English at elementary school concluded that the latest ITs could make learning of foreign languages more contextualized, creative and motivated.
On the strength of the assertion, that life-satisfying learning is the best policy for
learning English (especially by children), Lee Chien-I, Huang Ying-Chih and Lin
YiChun believe that the video is a good bearer of information that is the most suitable for
language learning. First of all, it is a great opportunity to capture real life situations,
and secondly, it is easy to access the necessary information through YouTube [
According to Cakir Cemal, due to the emergence of numerous open sources of information (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Internet newspapers and magazines) during the globalization period, we are able to observe the phenomenon called “Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages” (TESOL) as well as “Teaching English as a Language of Open Sources” (TELOS). TELOS can provide expected multimodal and multidimensional support for TESOL (especially in the context of learning English as a foreign language), enabling the acquisition of pragmatic skills (in particular semantic-syntactic skills), which can only be partially formed in traditional lessons, according to Cemal [4].
According to research [3], YouTube acts as a cognitive tool, which is able to promote raise of the level of critical thinking and cognitive ability of students in the process of learning English as a foreign language.
The analysis of experimental data [
Multifunctionality and effectiveness of YouTube as a tool for learning foreign languages is thus evident.
The purpose of the submitted report is: ─ the illustration of certain aspects of the practical use of commonly used sources of video material in the process of teaching German as the first or second foreign language at universities, namely at the pedagogical university; ─ the representation of recommendations on the conversion of video hosting content to didactic material while learning Practical Course of German Language by future teachers. 4
The interest of the main German apologists, in particular of the Goethe-Institut [14] and
DeutscheWelle (DW) [
In addition to the main theme, the mention should be made of the traditional separation in the structure of the speech activity of the four components: speaking and listening (these two types belong to oral speech), writing and reading (written speech). The exams for determining the level of language proficiency, including the “GoetheZertifikat”, consist of “Lesen” (reading), “Hören” (listening), “Schreiben” (writing) and “Sprechen” (speaking) (oral or individual exam) “Sprechen” (oral or individual exam). Such a division is quite logical, since mastering the native language takes place precisely in this natural scenario: from listening to speaking, reading, and, finally, writing. The practice of working with students, which learn German, shows, that audio competence is the most difficult to formulate. Although at first glance there may be an impression that listening is the easiest for children, without much visible effort, as opposed to writing. However, before starting to pronounce the first words and construct a coherent phrases and sentences, the child for several years is in an absolute linguistic environment where he/she can hear sounds and words of his/her native language, in fact, 24 hours a day. Learning the same foreign language often begins with reading and writing, and then speaking and listening. The perception of speech in real life rarely occurs without visual support, and therefore a significant percentage of information is transmitted by non-verbal means. Involving video materials for listening to music is much more effective than using audio tracks. When a video hero pick up a certain item, naming it at the same time, the need to accompany the introduction of a new lexical unit by the translation disappears. Contemplating certain actions with the subject and listening to the commentary of the heroes, the viewer learns the linguistic roots and grammatical structures.
Of course, it is impossible to make a training video to explain every linguistic phenomenon, so the effectiveness of this learning tool can be greatly enhanced by fixing the new material with additional exercises. Understanding this, the authors of the training series DW offer users to go to interactive tasks at the specified link to the official personal site of the television and radio company. Given the current tendency to reduce the audience load at universities of Ukraine and increase the amount of material for independent learning by the student, the use of educational films with exercise complexes can help to optimize their independent work.
YouTube, with its openness to everyone, can be used by teachers as a space for communication. The format of communication in the form of comments is ordinary for modern youth. Free expression of opinions in a foreign language (i.e. speaking) in classes is often hindered by the fear of a public demonstration of an error. Being in a position of assessment by a teacher places the latter in the eyes of the first as a controller, and not as an equal partner in communication.
Offering students the opportunity to discuss certain video materials in comments without mandatory identification of the person, the teacher uses the opportunity to remove excessive nervous tension of the audience and thus intensify the speech activity. Leading a live dialogue requires a quick reaction of the interlocutors, which is difficult to achieve, especially at the initial stage of language learning. In addition, the limited auditorium time does not allow thinking for too long. Pause reduces the dynamics of conversation, thoughts do not find the personification in the right words, the conversation fails, and thus the ability to feel the language as a means of communication loses. A written discussion of a given topic gives an opportunity to think about a replica, to engage in a conversation in a convenient time, to comment on the previously stated statements more reasonably. The tasks performed during the comments may be verified by the teacher (sometimes by the owner of the channel or by other users). If you watch online video tutorials, you can also achieve momentary synchronous interactivity that brings the conversation as close as possible to the “live” one, but this format is more likely to be used for individual work at home, since for class usage this can be technically difficult and organizationally incompatible, with the same schedule.
On the other hand, the teacher's own comments (if necessary also incognito) can promote the unobtrusive orientation of the conversation to a certain didactically determined path, and the usage of correct or contextually relevant linguistic constructions, in response to mistaken or misused, will allow correction of errors without causing a psychological discomfort. Observation of the general course of the conversation may become a valuable source of information for revealing personal qualities, preferences, interests and the level of formation of the foreign language competence of its participants. Such a format of communication may become a kind of modernized Socratic dialogue. It will replace the control by monitoring of the quality of education with the subsequent full realization of all the advantages of the latter for the constant improvement of the educational process.
In addition, participants who are not members of a particular training group may be involved in the conversation, so to speak “strangers”. To distinguish them from others in the absence of the desire to register under their own names (at least for the reasons above), you can by agreeing to add a certain code word to the name of the subscriber. The presence of “strangers” opens up good opportunities for the search for “penfriend”, because among them there are rarely happen to random people. Users from around the world are usually interested in learning German. Focusing on comments, you can choose a potentially interesting and useful for further private communication with the interlocutor. Not only students but also teachers can find for themselves likeminded colleagues in the hosting. Viewers often conduct didactic discussions and share reflections on problems and difficulties related to the learning of German language, especially difficult topics, stylistic nuances, etc.
The occasional cases of participation in commentary discussions on language video teaching media positively motivate those who are only German learners, to search for a tandem partner not only on educational channels. Having a certain passion or hobby and watching videos of relevant subjects in German, where the language ceases to be the subject of study and is used exclusively as a means of communication, one can turn to those, who are interested in the common theme of the language and to establish contacts on the appropriate language basis.
Encouraging students or pupils to review not only educational videos but also native speakers’ and various video knowledge departments, you can somewhat make a transition to substantive-linguistic integrated learning in German – CLILIG. Participation in the conference organized by the Goethe-Institute in Kyiv in September, 2017 [6] has become the basis for understanding that learning with the help of the CLIL method allows achieving higher levels of linguistic and substantive competence. The emergence of this methodology has become a response to the needs of the era of technical and digital technologies in specialists of different specialties, which, in addition to specialized knowledge, also speak foreign languages. The combination of professional knowledge, substantive-linguistic and general competences, which is the main goal of CLIL, has become a guarantee of a successful specialist’s career. Numerous reports of conference participants from Germany, Italy, Lithuania and Hungary have revealed the specifics of the usage of the CLIL methodology in the process of learning and the experience of foreign colleagues in integrating foreign language learning with other subjects during school education. Substantially interesting learning motivates learning of German language and creates a linguistic basis, with the help of which it will be possible to build further education, in particular, in a higher school.
The wide theme range of YouTube videos allows you to organize CLIL-based
learning not only at school but also in higher school. Implementations of the principle
of inter-subject communications are subordinated to the program from all disciplines,
regardless of the cycles they belong to. So it only remains to make established
communications in foreign languages. We will speculate on the example of students
learning German language within the specialty 014.02 Secondary education. Language
and literature (German / English) with an additional specialty, accordingly (English /
German) language. The main professional disciplines for them are Pedagogics, German
and English languages. The vast majority of educational videos, where the German
language is the subject of a study as a foreign language, is aimed to the
Englishspeaking audience. They are often accompanied by English subtitles or by the
translation of individual lexical units (for example [
A narrowly-focused video may be useful while studying a wide range of topics within practical courses and linguistic studies.
As for Pedagogics and German language, it should be noted that it is not difficult to
find videos on the YouTube of a particular topic (for example, the Christian Kißler [
The video format, which is offered by the “LearnGerman” channel, for example [13], allows you to achieve better results in one more direction of language work. This is a kind of educational activity, such as home or academic reading. Generally, the main goal of individual reading is to develop perceiving skills of written foreign language text, expanding vocabulary and deepening linguistic competence. The accompaniment of audio reproduction of the available for visual perception of the printed source contributes not only to the accompanying development of the above-mentioned listening skills, but also to the improvement of pronunciation. Comparison of the results of text work in two groups of students, one of which used only paper, and the other – audiovisual, showed that the pronunciation, and most importantly intonation, during the retelling of certain passages of the read (and listened) story in the second group significantly improved.
Returning to the institutions that promote German in the world, the Goethe-Institute should be reminded once more and noted that a significant number of its projects on YouTube and not only there is intended to prepare applicants for exams to confirm a certain level of language proficiency. In collaboration with the institute, there are also numerous printed guides from several German publishing houses, mostly accompanied by interactive exercises and audio materials. This logically updates the question of what is and is there in general the prevalence of video channels over “classical”, albeit modernized, learning tools. In our opinion, the advantage becomes more obvious, the higher level of language proficiency of the person who prepares for the exam is.
According to [
The number of educational author channels of various content (from lexical / grammatical explanations and audio exercises to reading / listening to literary texts and preparation for language tests) is constantly increasing. Informal educational videos feature a relaxed atmosphere, relevance, and meta-language reflection opportunity, gaining increasing popularity due to such characteristics. Interested in learning language may choose a teacher not only by the form of teaching didactic material (home videos in the format of communication tete-a-tete or recorded videos), but also by the personal authors’ qualities. The latter, in fact, significantly contribute to the promotion of the language and its coverage by a broad audience. It is rarely when a university teacher may boast thousands of students from around the world who are eagerly awaiting each of his lectures, often defining its topic.
A brief didactical analysis of the general opportunities and practical experience of using the materials of several relevant in the thematic plan channels with a quite wide permanent audience is presented below.
The author of the “Slow German” channel, Anik Rubens, offers users of YouTube
audio clips on a wide variety of topics (biographies of prominent German figures,
national traditions and customs, domestic issues, social relationships, etc.), dictated at
a slow tempo in order to ensure their better understanding. Each lesson is
complemented by full written support of the sounded text. Using the Urlaub (Vacation)
[
The “Deutschlernen durch Hören” channel also produces audio tutorials (educational
dialogues on various themes, songs) and video materials. In particular, audio texts with
control tasks are similar to those used during the “Telc” language exam passing, for
example [7]. Doing a trial test on the YouTube platform allows you to feel the
atmosphere of a real exam, to assess the difficulty of the task, and to determine the level
of your own audio competence by using the correct answer key added to each video.
The mentioned above materials may be used as control tasks while the Practical Course
of German Language. At the initial stage of learning language, it was quite positive to
use a study song which is composed of numerous language cliches typical to the
situations “Acquaintance” and “At the cafe / restaurant” [
The real master of the visual-dramatic song, which does not leave anyone indifferent
and awakens interest to learn language, is Uwe Kind, the author of the “Uwe Kind &
LingoTech” channel, and Singling techniques. Thanks to the amusement, the
extraordinariness and, at the same time, the noticeable efficiency of the latter is used
by the students and teachers of the whole world in studying spoken foreign languages.
In collaboration with composer Mark Schaffel, “LingoTech” was created – “it is a
music that combines melody, rhythm, drama, movement and linguistic feedback,
becoming a common experience that inspires young people to learn languages.”
LingoTech is based on the assumption that music simplifies the process of
memorization, which allows students to improve foreign pronunciation and intonation
[
The author of the “Deutsch in Bildern” channel creates his own educational videos
using the positive aspects of another mnemonic technique, namely, illustrative. In order
to demonstrate the syntactic structure of the sentence and the relationship between its
members, there was a train, in which the locomotive is as a Subject, numerous wagons
replace the Object, and the Adverbial Modifier is associated with railways [
Despite the enormous amount of educational YouTube channels, it is difficult sometimes to find “your own channel” – the one that offers comprehensive, competent answers to relevant issues regarding a wide variety of linguistic aspects and promotes the development of speech and meta-language competencies. Before advising a specific video or channel to students, you should critically treat content, format, and the author's professionalism. Three next channels were created by YouTube bloggers who not only studied German as a specialty for a long time, but also have many years of experience in teaching it.
The “Deutsch mit Marija” channel may be useful, first of all, for those who are
preparing to pass a language exam, in particular TELC. The author herself is one of the
company’s examiners (telc GmbH) [
In the channel playlists, you can find videos that are dedicated to the enrichment of the vocabulary (Wortschatz). Some of them explain the meaning of constant figures of speech or cliché and contain recommendations on the practicability of using them in speech. Some of them highlight semantic and stylistic features of cognate verbs or nouns. Other video groups are aimed to help you learn grammar and expand your country studying competence. The description of different life situations, seemingly, is devoid of didactic loading, becomes a valuable source of information for those who learn the language in the absence of the possibility of constant communication with its native speakers, who are in modern realities of Germany or another German-speaking country.
Considering information given above, let us note that the author of the next channel
has developed a unique method of flooding in a foreign environment. Peter Heinrich, a
teacher of German language from Austria, has engaged all his family to create nominal
YouTube channel [
Among the positive achievements of the GermanSkills.com channel, it has to be noted the provided methodological recommendations for the development of pronunciation skills. The proposed exercises, for example [8], brought tangible results in the formation of the correct articulation of one of the most difficult sounds in German language for Ukrainian students, – pronounced in the French manner [r].
The practical application for materials, which appears within the framework of 30 Days Challenge, has also been found at Practical Course of German Language lessons. 30 TageChallenge is dedicated to the problems of learning German language: how to speak correctly and quickly, how to use multimedia to learn language, how to master different types of speech activity, how to avoid mistakes while learning new vocabulary, why there is a fear of speaking in foreign languages, etc. [9]. Students were asked to register as the project participant and to join a peculiar thirty-day marathon. Depending on the level of language proficiency, the participants received an e-mail daily task – the theme of the day from which they had to speak by recording an audio message. The predicted audio format of the answer helped many to overcome the fear of speaking aloud, and the ability to listen to the messages of other participants and discuss them contributed to the activation of speech skills. Several reports by the author of the channel on the issues of challenge were offered for individual extra-audition listening to students who did not join the experiment, which caused an active reflection of the latter. 5
We should note that the author’s training channels on YouTube from professional vendors and amateurs can be used as additional teaching material in class and extracurricular for those students, who learn German language. There is obvious positive impact on: creating a dynamic learning environment; increasing the motivation of students’ educational and cognitive activity by flooding into the linguistic environment through authentic video materials; optimization of individual work aimed at deepening or strengthening knowledge on specific educational topics, on condition of availability of professional monitoring and control. The use of information technologies creates additional opportunities for teachers, but requires a responsible approach to their use in order to achieve the goals and objectives provided by the curriculum. Integration of open sources of information into the educational process in universities requires careful selection of available material and its creative didactical revision (in particular, supplementation with the training activities agreed upon the purpose of concrete practical training). However, the question remains open of the probability of achieving a certain level of language proficiency solely on their basis. The latter requires a particular scientific research.
Content characteristics and some tips for using YouTube channels are summarized in Table 2.
Expanding the boundaries of educational videos usage, which are represented as additional tools for teaching foreign languages provided in video hosting, on condition that they would be pre-adapted to the requirements of educational programs, has no doubt. Hence it seems expedient to master the methodical techniques of introducing them into the process of universities training of students of pedagogical specialties and encouraging the latter to create their own educational videos that are suitable for work in the audience and outside it. 14.