A media-based approach to developing ethnographic skills for second language teaching and learning

Future modern language teachers will be asked to use evolving information and communication technologies to meet new curricular objectives which call on students to foster intercultural sensitivity and tolerance rather than amass factual knowledge. To meet these challenges in their classrooms, these beginning instructors will be expected to use ethnographic research methods to interpret complex, multimodal media texts from the target language cultures. What are the technical and intellectual skills needed to carry out this type of research and how can teacher education programs ensure their graduates possess these skills when they enter the classrooms? To this aim, this article identifies four skills--thick observation, thick interpretation, thick comparison, and thick description--and proposes a media-based approach to achieve this goal. In this approach, students worked together in teams to create short digital movies based on their cultural interpretations of an object of their choice, such as coffee, cars or letters, and used a variety of media to reflect on their learning processes. To illustrate this process, this discussion is followed by a multimedia prof