Utilizing Captioned Films for Teaching Communication Skills

Written in 1981 for the Captioned Films for the Deaf lesson guide manual. Kathryn Silvis, Assistant Professor of Special Education at MacMurray College, encourages teachers to consider the use of captioned films as a tool for the teaching of communication skills (auditory training, visual communication, and speech). Ms. Silvis overviews the films that might have value in these areas, including those dealing with emotions, human relations, fables, children's literature, poetry, safety education, community life, and others. She points out special features of films, such as a bouncing ball to indicate the number of beats each syllable of a word is prolonged in a song or rhyme. At the end of the article, she includes a form for analysis of the potential use of a captioned film for use in communication skills training, including attention to use of lip movements and their visibility for visual communication training. Captioned films, she concludes, provide the teacher with a motivating and enriching tool that can be utilized to enhance a teaching unit in any subject area.

Tags: history, captioning