Abstract:

As a multimodal open educational resource, online video has been successfully used in a variety of formal and informal teaching contexts. On the one hand, many studies have shown that these videos are a unique and rich resource for various areas of foreign language teaching, but these studies rarely involve the design of video, such as its combination of visual, audio, and textual elements. On the other hand, some studies have shown that keeping videos short and focused on learning objectives is more attractive from a receptive perspective for learners. In this sense, the rapid growth of platforms that provide short videos in recent years seems to have opened up even more possibilities for foreign language teaching. In this article, we present results of an investigation that used short videos on the TikTok platform for teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Videos with more than one hundred thousand likes were analyzed and used to understand the experience of online video design and the video elements that were popular with learners in terms of multimodal design of visual, audio, and textual elements. Preliminary results suggest that the length of short videos should be between 20 and 40 seconds, with a familiar and welcoming background tone. Videos should be recorded on a vertical screen with a stable camera and have an appropriate background music. Characters should be proficient in using gestures and the source and target languages should be written in a consistent sized white or yellow font, positioned below the middle of the screen. It is hoped that this research will contribute to the design of short video resources in the context of online foreign language teaching and learning, and thus assist teachers and learners.

Keywords:

Multimodal, Video design, Short video, Foreign Language, TikTok.