el, DOCUMENT RESUME ED 118 123 IR 003 028 AUTHOR Borton, Terry; And Others TITLE Dual Audio Television; an Experiment in Saturday Morning Broadcast and a Summary Report. INSTITUTION Philadelphia School District, Pa. Office of -Curriculum and Instruction. PUB DATE 1 75 NOTE 21p.; For related documents see Ed 094 753 and IR 003 027-030 EDRS PRICE MF -$0.83 HC-$1.67 Plus Postage DESCRIPTORS ' Audiovisual Instruction; *Commercial Television; *Educational Radio; *Educational Research; Elementary 'Education; *Experimental Programs; Instructional, Innovation; Instructional Technology; Programing (Broadcast); Research Methodology; Statistical Analysis; Statistical Data; Television; *Television Research; Television Viewing; Vocabulary; Vocabulary Development IDENTIFIERS *Dual Audio Television; Flintstones; Gilligans Island; Philadelphia City Schools; Scooby Doo ABSTRACT'. The Philadelp hia City Schools engaged in a four-year program to develop and test dual audio television, a way to help' children learn more from the massive amounts of time they spend watching commercial television.Ache format consisted of an instructional radio broadcasthich accompanied popular television shows and attempted to clarify and amplify the vocabu#ry concepts that were presented. Supplsentary audio broadcasts were developed for"Gilligan's Island," "'Me Flintstones," and "Scooby Doo," and studies were conducted to measure their levels of utilization and their effects on vocabulary development': Results shoved that the audience size was insufficient to justify-national networking, and the instruction was effective for only a portion of the intended audience. (EMH) ft *********************************************************************** ISOcuments acquired by ERIC include many informal unpublished- * * materials not available from other so es. ERIC makes every effort * * ,to, obtain the best copy available. ertheless, items of marginal * * reproducibility are often encounter and this affects the quality * * of 'the microfiche and hardcopy repr ductions ERIC makes available * * via the ERIC Document Reproduction ervic\* (EDRS). EDRS is not * responsible' for the quality of the iginil. document. Reproductions * * supplied by EDRS are the best that c be made-ItOm the original,\ *' **************************************** *************************w**** DUAL AUDIO TELEVISION AL...Experiment in Saturday. Morning Brodcast And a Summary Report by Terry Borton, Leonard Belasco, Stephen Baskerville U S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION IL WELFARE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO. OUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANI;STION ORIGIN- * STING IT POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED 00 NOT NECESSARILY REPRE- SENT OF F ICIAL.NST IONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY al Audio Television Project 3th & Spring Garden Sts., Philadelphia, Pa. 19123 .0" 215-627-3001 What Is Dual Audio Television? Dual audio television instruction is ameeeof gaining educational benefit from commercial entertainment television programs.The average American child spends about twenty-four hours a week watching television, and Most of that time is spent, watching entertainment - - cartoons and_situation 4 'comediesnot educational programs. Research indicatesthat children learn remarkably little vocabulary or other school-rela4ed information from the enfertainment'television programs they watch. Yet,otertainment televisioR 0, A contains a level of language far above what many children can Understand or speak, and awide variety of concepts which could be useful tp For instance, in one typical half-hour cartoon program there Were over, seventy words which were well Above the ,vocabulary level of the average chidwatching. AK Dual audio television uses the entertainment television which children are already watching at hoe after school as the basiS fora supplementary instructional,program. The children can hear the dual audio instructor over radio while watching such popular television programs asGilligan's Island The Plintstones,.pr Scooby Dba. The dual audio instructor comes on television just before the television P6gram begins and explains how to tune in the , 0 dual audio radio ptovram.. The television program,itself is aired just as it .9, normally would be, and the children keep the television sound at its normal level. The dual audio instructor does not interrupt the television eharac or the commercials. He speaks during, the pausesin the television progr dialogue, and picksup on the program1s content,_using it to teach basic -2-- Although dual audio scripts have been prepared to teach reading, science, and general problem solving, recent programming has concentratedon teaching vocabulary, since there is strong evidence linking vocabulary increasesto better reading and IQ scores. The following annotated excerpt from a dual audio scriptillustrates vale the way in which the radio commentary is used to teach vocabulary. 1 EXCERPT FROM A DUAL AUDIO SCRIPT TV Program: There is trouble under the ocean and the program narrator says that our hero is sent to "investigate." DUAL AUDIO ,"YOU KNOW, TO INVESTIGATE MEANS TO FIND INSTRUCTOR: OUT EVERYTHING YOU CAN ABOUT SOMETHING. IT'S LIKE SOLVING A MYSTERY." Rationale: Definition of "investigate." TV Program: The hero begins to poke around. DUAL AUDIO "HE MUST HAVE FOUND A CLUE IN HIS INSTRUCTOR: INVESTIGATION." Rationale: Expansion of definition. TV Program: The hero spots a building under water. DUAL AUDIO "NOW THERE'S SOMETHING TO FIND OUT ABOUT, TO INSTRUCTOR: INVESTIGATE!" Rationale: Implicit re-definition. TV Program: Underwater police appear. DUAL''AUDIO "THOSE POLICE MUST BE INVESTIGATING THE INSTRUCTOR: MYSTERY TOO. FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW, ,SOME- ONE AROUND THAT AREA WOULD BE SUSPICIOUS." . Rationale: Re-emphasis of the concept, "point of vi,ew," taught in previous program. TV Program: The hero resumes the search. DUAL AUDIO "YEAH, INVESTIGATE A LITTLE MORE. TO INSTRUCTOR: INVESTIGATE MEANS TO FIND OUT EVERYTHING YOU CAN ABOUT SOMETHING." Rationale: Re-definition. TV Program: The hero uses a searchlight. DUAL AUDIO "LOOK AT THAT SEARC6,IGHT! HAVE YOU EVER INSTRUCTOR: USED A FLASHLIGHT TO INVESTIGATE SOMETHING?" Rationale: Application to personal experience. 5 4 Because the dual audio broadcasts supp4ment a television program that is already entertaining, they can be hA.vily instructional and still draw large audiences. However, the dual audio scripts themselvescontain a sprinkling of entertainment, with songs, jokes, and stories mixed into the script to increase teaching effectivenessand to help keep the children E.' interested. /-1 Dual audio television scripts are prepared by obtaining television programs from the television station or distributor, previewing them carefully to determine the vocabulary to be taught, and then writing the dual audio instructor's comments. The dual audio instructor broadcasts live from the script while watching the televisionprogram on a monitor in the radio station.During commercial breaks, soft music is played on the radio toserveLeeelooatorfor children trying to find the station. Review Of Previous Research Studies on dual audio. television instruction have been designed to test the basic potential of the idea, to develop it into a form that could be used on a large-scale basis, and to test its effectiveness in actual mass broadcast condictions. The first study (Borton, 1971) outlined the idea of dual audio, considered some of the possible problems of development and control, and reported on a preliminary test in which small groups of low-income white children in Cambridge, Massachusetts watched short segments of commercial television programs with and without dual audio in a simulated home-viewing situation. The television programs were shown on a video tape recorder, and the dual audio was heard over a manually synched audio tape recorder. Those children who heard the dual audio made half as many mistakes on a test of the material taught as those who did not hear it. A series of laboratory testswere conducted in a similar format by the Philadelphia Board of Education's DualAudio Television Project when it was first established in 1971. The primary purpose of thesetests, using both black and white, and low and highincome children, was to develop effective styles of dual audio narration,so that children would want to listen to dual audio and would learnfrom what they heard. A Dual Audio Writer's Handbook was developeddescribing those methods of dual audio instruction which seemed most effective. In the Spring of 1972, a one-month fieldexperiment was conducted using 70 low-income black children,some of whom watched the television cartoon Astro-Boy as they usually did ona regular UHF channel, and some of whom could also hear dual audioon small fix-tuned FM receivers loaned to them during the broadcast period. (Barton, Belasco,and Baskerville, 1974) Both groups of children were monitored bytheir parents who wrote down verbatim what they said and did during thebroadcast. The dual audio group listened to dual audio an average of 83% ofthe time they were watching the television program, and this group also performedsignificantly higher on tests of the material taught than did the controlgroup. In the Spring of 1973, a two-month fieldexperiment was conducted using a sample of 400 low-income black children, with dualaudio commentary provided for the television cartoon Spiderman (Borton,Belasco,fand Echewa, 1974) Four treatment groups were nvolved: one that simply watched