Using TV Streaming News in the Language Classroom: How to build a Multimedia Didactic Unit

This study was conducted with the participation of learners enrolled in the Department of Asian and North African Studies in Ca' Foscari University, Venice, Italy. The author created a multimedia didactic unit based on TV Streaming News in Japanese in a third year Japanese class in the fall semester of the academic year 2011-12. By filtering Japanese news clips through Internet streaming technology and organizing a modular approach which included news contents, the author could observe the effects of this kind of activity on both oral and written language. Moreover, from a sociolinguistic perspective, the study illustrates how learners can benefit from a multimedia approach even though they are not used to watching Japanese television or Internet news streaming on a daily basis.