Use of Video/Listening Content Transcripts in English for Coronavirus Awareness and Information

Commentary

Triangulation of data through a variety of data sources (data from multiple sources) / different angles /perspectives enriches the analysis of findings and validates the results of a study. Buch, et al. [1] defines data triangulation as “the elicitation of different types of data sources at dfferent times and situations.” Due to high percentage of any kind of informaton available through English, the command of English is significant to reach these sources and make our own apprasials though more diversified data driven solutions. One of the vital issues this can be applied to is high risk infectious disease emergence and spread. The latest threat causing a global outbreak is Coronavirus disease ‘COVID-19’. The latest updates coming from around the world is important.

Hence the skill that language learning outcomes succeeded most is the reading skill, and given the challenge of listening skill it is important that education providers should guide their learners to help access the transcripts on the Internet of the video/audio broadcasts with educational content and induce them to use and make the most of the skill they learned. Therefore this paper shows that there is enough quality transcripts with ‘COVID-19’-related content, which provides relevant information about coronavirus disease.

From the context of USA, remarks of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Anthony Fauci provides guidance in several interviews such as one with Chuck Todd [2] “you get so many people who are infected that the best thing you need to do is what we call Commentay mitigation in addition to containment.” “It really is the peak is less and the numbers total would be less” [3]. Hopefully, what we’re doing in a very aggressive way of containment and mitigation, we’ll be able to not only flatten” the curve and “diminish the duration [4].

In A CNN Global Town Hall: Coronavirus Facts and Fears aired March 5, 2020, a member of the US president’s Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Fauci, et al. [5] warns that “until we have a much more accurate determination of who is infected, including those who are asymptomatic, we will not get a more accurate determination of what the case fatality rate is.” In the same Town Hall, Dr. Seema Yasmin, et al. [6] (director of health communication initiative) states that “the disease is not the only thing that spreads. You also get rumors and health hoaxes, misinformation, and emotional contagion, as well” and defines it as “It’s when one person gets anxious and starts panicking, and then you pick up on that, and then you get panicky”.

In the CNN Town Hall aired March 19, Fauci, et al. [7] recommends caution stating that “some new modeling data from China that shows four out of five people who were diagnosed with the coronavirus contracted it from someone who didn’t know they had it.” …. “we all have to behave like we have the virus”. In the Donald Trump Coronavirus Task Force Briefing aired March 23, Dr. Deborah Birx, (the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force), “by people who have high titers or those antibodies, those can become our solution with plasmapheresis for those in need” …. “the making of hyperimmune globulin. Knowing who they are becomes really critical [8].” Above are a just a few examples of a possible selection of hightlights from the transcripts. The availability of these transcripts has implications for content based language learning or medical English CLIL (content and language integrated learning) courses and English for Professional purposes as well. Content based instruction finds support in Richards, et al. [9] argument that the language acquisition becomes efficient if information delivery is provided with interesting and useful content.

As can be seen in Zengin, et al. [10], Zengin, et al. [11], Zengin, et al. [12], a computer assisted language learning (CALL) application, Google search skills, one of which is know-how of entering search operators/commands) will be of use for academics as well. One can find efficient access to transcripts with such Googling examples as [allintext:transcripts “coronavirus” fauci “task force”] or we can naarow down the search to specific sites [site:edition. cnn.com] or [site:rev.com] once you have found out some input-rich websites.