ReelWords: Interactive Film Subtitling Program

This program allows professors to take advantage of various existing technologies to easily use any films supported on laser discs, quick time movies (on CD-ROM) as well as time-coded videos for educational purposes. This tool also allows the creation of entire interactive texts around a film, with the addition of scripts, menus, photos, dictionnaries thus creating a linguistic environment for successful language learning. The film (in a high resolution) will appear on the screen of an AV Macintosh without the cumbersome subtitles in English. Underneath the film image, a dialog box will allow the student to choose between several levels of linguistic information (no help, key words only, full script, full script and cultural footnotes) and to navigate between scenes at various speeds (by chapter, by scene, by line of text.) These four levels will be easily accessible at any point of the viewing session as will be the switching between the different speeds. Moreover, the modular design of the program will allow for the addition of listening comprehension tools as well as a battery of comprehension exercises, self-testing and visual recognition exercises in stage II and III of the project. The first film "Un monde sans pitié" will be fully developed and the finished program will be printed on a CD-ROM.

The objective of the project is to facilitate the use of original language materials in the classroom and during independent studies. The film (in a high resolution) appears on the screen of an AV Macintosh without the cumbersome subtitles that are covered. Underneath the film image, a dialog box allows the student to choose between several levels of linguistic information (no help, key words only, full script, full script and cultural footnotes) and to navigate between scenes at various speeds (by chapter, by scene, by line of text.) These four levels can be easily accessible at any point of the viewing Moreover, the modular design of the program allows for the addition of listening comprehension tools as well as a battery of comprehension exercises, self-testing and visual recognition exercises in stage II and III of the project.