INTRODUCTION
There are 4 skills in English that
we have to master, such as listening, reading, writing and speaking. Listening
is one of the first skills that must to learn by pupils in English. Devine
(1982) said that, listening is the primary means by which incoming ideas and
information are taken in.
According
to Tomlinson’s (1984) listening is the ability to identify and understand what
others are saying. This process involves understanding a speaker's accent or
pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of
meaning. An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously.
Barker (1971) states that, in a language
classroom, listening ability plays a momentous role in the development of other
language skills. Listening can help students build vocabulary, develop language
proficiency, and improve language usage. Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011), also state
that Listening plays an important role in communication, the total time spent
on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%,; speaking 25-30%; reading 11-16%;
and writing about 9% .
There
are three main reasons to support the importance of listening in foreign
language learning. First, According to Buck (2001), a new language learner
should learn listening at the initial stage of language. Learning in the same
manner as a child learns a mother language. This is because listening is a
skill developed in the very beginning of a child's learning of language. Listening is a natural
process in acquiring a new language. According to Underwood (1989), a child
receives a large amount of verbal input through listening prior to developing
speaking, writing
and reading skills. These skills are developed later as the child matures.
Second, listening can enhance speaking skill. Spoken language provides a means
of interaction for the leaner. Furthermore, a learner’s failure to understand
the language they hear is an incentive, not a barrier, to interaction and
learning. Therefore, it is necessary to develop listening skill in the initial
stage of learning in order to become a good speaker. Finally, listening
exercises help to draw a learner's attention to new forms in the language i.e.
vocabulary, grammar and interaction patterns. Thus, listening comprehension
provides the right conditions for language acquisition and the development of
other language skills(Krashen, 1989). That is way, listening skill is very
important to be taught and mastered by the English learners because it can be a
fundamental skill to master the other skills and to gain information as much as
possible.
The students have difficulties or
problem in listening. Goh ( 2000) states that Listening difficulties are
defined as the internal and external characteristics that might interrupt text
understanding and real-life processing problems directly related to cognitive
procedures that take place at various stages of listening comprehension.
In order to develop listening skills,
effective material used in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes is a
crucial aspect of the teaching method. Technology has played an increasingly
important role in the methods of instruction. One technology is video which
offers instructors a wide variety of resource material to be employed in EFL
classrooms to improve students’ listening comprehension.
Video materials can be used an
alternative instructional tool for teaching listening since they are a rich
source of conversation and dialogue by English speakers. This can greatly
facilitate comprehension of pronunciation. Secules, Herron & Tomasello
(1992 cited in Keihaniyan, 2013) mentioned that the employment of video-based
instruction is preferable to audio-only instruction in teaching language
learning due to its multiplying input modalities that can motivate learners and
attract their attention to the aural input. As a result, the use of video
material is widely employed as an instrument to practice listening skill in
English language learning. For these reasons, the aim of this study was to gain
an understanding of the effects of using video materials in the development of
listening skills in an EFL classroom’.
The teaching of listening has attracted
a greater level of interest in recent years than it did in the past. University
entrance exams, school leaving and other examinations now often include a
listening component, acknowledging that listening skills are a core component
of second language proficiency, and also reflecting the assumption that if
listening isn’t tested, teachers won’t teach it. Earlier views of listening saw
it as the mastery of discrete skills or microskills, such as recognizing
reduced forms of words, recognizing cohesive devices in texts, and identifying
key words in a text, and that these skills should form the focus of teaching.
Later views of listening drew on the field of cognitive psychology, which
introduced the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing and the role of
prior knowledge and schema in comprehension. Listening came to be seen as an
interpretive process. At the same time the field of discourse analysis and
conversational analysis revealed a great deal about the nature and organization
of spoken discourse and lead to a realization that written texts read aloud
could not provide a suitable basis for developing the abilities needed to
proceess real-time authentic discourse. Current views of listening hance
emphasize the role of the listene, who is seen an active participant in
listening, employing strateies to facilitate, monitor, and evaluate their
listening.
The
purposes of the study were as follows:
1)
To develop the listening skills of university students studying English through
using video materials.
2)
To evaluate students’ attitudes towards using video materials in teaching
listening skills.
Authentic material is defined by Gardner
and Miller (1999, pp. 101) as material intended for some other use besides
language learning. Authentic material can come in all forms of communication.
There are several
benefits of employing authentic materials for language learning and teaching:
First, they can provide examples for
learners of how to communicate in real life situations through exposing them to
the sorts of messages they will likely face in everyday conversation. Second,
authentic materials can help the leaner focus on the language skills they truly
need and ignore skills they may not need for their job or studies.
Video can be a very valuable tool for
language learning. The advantages this tool provides, which this section will
discuss, include the provision of samples of real-life communication,
motivation for language learning, and promoting language acquisition. The first
major advantage of using video is that it can provide samples of real-life
situations.
Lonergan (1984, pp. 4-5 cited in
Lustigová, 2013) pointed out that video is able to present“complete
communicative situations. At their best, video presentations will be
intrinsically interesting to language learners. The learner will want to watch,
even if comprehension is limited.” Learners can use video to study how language
use may be employed by age and how the relationship between language use and
paralinguistic features can be focused, including how to convey moods and
feelings.
Mirvan (2013) asserted that employing
video materials in a classroom can enhance students’ motivation to learn since
it can expose them to a wide variety of situations that can help them comprehend
similar situations in real life.
Allan (1985, pp. 48-49 cited in Liu,
2005), who also argues that video reflects real-life communication, advances
another reason why video is more advantageous than other forms of authentic
material; it presents “slices of life.” Normally, teachers work with dialog in textbooks
or audio cassettes; however, video presents communication more contextually. According
to Allan, this makes video a valuable addition to language learning.
Besides providing real communication
situations, video can be more motivating than other forms of authentic
material. Christopher and Ho (1996, pp. 86) provide another reason why this is
so; it can be entertaining. Music and setting elements can make for an
enjoyable experience by learners. Video movies provide topics and ideas for learners
to discuss.
In order to choose video material for
the classroom, topics must be chosen based on students’ interest and their
level of English proficiency, as well as cultural aspects. In addition, Nunan
(2003) stated that the design of listening cycles is an important
consideration, which involves selecting the content of the video or audio
recording and dividing it into sections for presenting in stages to learners.
Instructors can design cycles of activities in which learners can participate.
The instructor should also be a reflective observer in order not to distract
the learners’ attention from the video. Therefore, it would be very beneficial
for instructors to select video materials that are conducive to language
learning. Learners are more motivated to cope with the instruction when given
the opportunity to study with the use of video materials.
METHOD
As stated in the research purposes, this study
is to develop the listening skills of university students studying English
through using video materials and also to evaluate students’ attitudes towards
using video materials in teaching listening skills. This research is too see
how the students listening comprehension using video in the University level.
The research want to see how the student’s comprehension in listening after
they listening using video.
In this research, the researcher was involved
in the teaching and learning process. The population and sample was 118 first-year
English major students in the second semester of academic year 2012 at one of University. The sample
in the study was 41 of these students, selected by simple random sampling from
one of three classes. There are 10
units of lesson plans for the instruction. The materials are short English
language documentaries about culture, environment and adventure activities.
Each video was 2-5 minutes in length.
The study was
conducted during the second semester of academic year 2012. It involved 20
periods of an hour each. Two periods were used for the pre-test and post-test
and the other periods were used for the
experiment.
The researcher used a pre-test and
post-test to study the progress of student’s learning achievement before and
after they studied listening with videos. The questionnaire is study the student’s attitudes
towards learning listening with videos, constructed by using the Likert method.
The
data were collected from the students’ scores of the pre-test and post-test of
listening comprehension, and from exercises undertaken after each learning
material was presented. The procedure followed in the teaching plan used in the
study encompassed the following three stages:
·
Pre-listening
At
the beginning of the class, the researcher outlined the objectives of the
lesson and the topic of the presentation material, then asked the students
about their background knowledge and related vocabulary. A series of
leading questions was put to the students to help them before studying with the
material.
·
While-listening
First, the students were presented with the entire
learning material and instructed to take notes or write down key words. Second,
the material was presented again accompanied by an exercise to be completed by
the students.
·
Post-listening
The
students completed a questionnaire and checked the answers carefully for a
minute before exchanging it with their partners in order to check if the
answers are correct, then handed in the exercise to the researcher. They were
then given the opportunity to discuss the material presented and to express
their ideas or opinions about it.
RESULT
This is the comparative result of English
listening pre-test and post-test scores of students. The average mean scores of
the pre-test and the post-test are 7.80 and 11.80 respectively. The standard
deviation of the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group was 2.14 and
1.93 respectively. According to the result of the t-test which was -20.248, it
can be concluded that the learning achievement of students’ post-test is higher
than the pre-test at a significance level of 0.05. The students’ English listening
comprehension ability increased significantly after learning with the videos.
The result of this study is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. The result of comparison between of English
listening pre-test and post-test scores.
Based on the class observation, the
researcher concluded that teaching listening using video to the first-semester
on the first year was effective to develop the student’s listening comprehended.
Analysis of the students’ responses from the questionnaire revealed that they
were more interested in learning English if the teacher used English videos as
teaching materials. In addition, the keyword preview before watching videos
motivated them to learn English. They explained that it was easier for them to
remember and understand vocabulary in the video which they had previously
taught by the researcher during the pre-listening stage. Overall, students
agreed that videos were beneficial in learning English, and that English
subtitles in video movies were an excellent aid to learning English.
The input is scanned for familiar
words, and grammatical knowledge is used to work out the relationship between
elements of sentences. Clark and Clark (1977: 49) summarize this view of
listening in the following way:
·
Listeners take in raw
and hold a phonological representation of it working memory
·
They immediately
attempt to organize the phonological representation into constituents,
identifying their content and function.
·
They identify each
constituent and then construct underlying propositions, building continually onto
a hierarchical representation of propositions.
·
Once they have
identified the propositions for a constituent, they retain them in working and
at some point purge memory of the phonological representation. In oing this, they forget the exact
wording and retain the meaning.
Video is widely considered more powerful, more sailent, and more
comprehensible than other media for second and foreign language
students(Brinton & Gaskill, 2009; MacWilliam, 2004; Tudor, 2006;
Vanderplank,2004). In rare empirical studies, video-based instruction is
consistently preferred over other language learning activities (Secules,
Herron, & Tomasello, 2010) as well as over audio-only instruction
(Pederson, 1988).
Multimedia systems with video under
learner control are also preferred other instructional activities (Brooks et
al., 2002; Brownfield, 2006). In short, multiplying input modalities to include
full motion video apparently motivates learners and engages their attention to
aural input.
DISCUSSION
Teaching listening
using video is more success in teaching Englsih as the foreign language,
because from the video the students can see how the native speakers pronounce
the words in English. Sometimes, most of the studens have dificulties in
listening comprehension because they dont kow the words are pronounce. When the
students see the video and see how the native pronounce the words, the aims of
the lesson will be achieve easily.
The finding of this
study was in line with the study conducted by Maneekul (2002). The result of
her study showed that teaching listening using authentic video materials
enhances student’s listening comprehension ability due to the combination of
visual images and sound which stimulate student’s perceptions. In addition,
tone and speed of speech are spontaneous, similar to that in daily-life
situations. According to Meskill (1996), strong receptivity may be related to
the ease of listening processing that visual accompaniment implies. Video can
help in promoting the language learners’ listening comprehension. The structure
of language is in the form of ungrammatical features that are not similar to
the written language, which can enhance learners’ comprehension as well as
entertaining them. The connection between the classroom and real world
encourage students to understand the relationship between learning and
practicing. Video is widely accepted as more powerful and more comprehensible
than other media for second and foreign language students (Brinton &
Gaskill, 2009; MacWilliam, 2004 cited in Keihaniyan, 2013.
Teachers should be
well-trained in the use of video and how best to exploit its inherent
advantages in a learning environment. Furthermore, the selection of the video
content should be appropriate to the level of students’ English proficiency.
The topics of the content should be matched to their interests and their
background knowledge in order to motivate them to learn.
Authentic video
material needs to be carefully chosen to ensure the level of difficulty is
appropriate and the content is of interest to students. Videos containing
difficult vocabulary or ungrammatical or incomplete structures should not be
used. This includes videos in which the spoken language might contain many
difficult or unneeded English idioms and expressions, or the rhythm, tone and
phonological systems have different features from the students' first language
which could contribute to misunderstanding or be difficult for non-native
listeners to understand the content. Thus, students might not be able to
discriminate the reduced or incomplete forms of language while they were
watching the videos. In addition, Lynch (1998) further explained that when the
speaking rate is too fast, listeners will not have enough time to process the
complete messages. This means that they will focus their attention more on
lexical or grammatical processing than the meaning of the text. Therefore, they
would not catch all the messages conveyed
CONCLUSION
The findings of
this study revealed that the use of video materials to develop listening
comprehension of first-year English major students seemed to be effective, as
indicated by the post-test score which was significantly higher than the
pre-test score.
Analysis of the
students’ responses from the questionnaire revealed that they were more
interested in learning English if the teacher used English videos as teaching
materials. In addition, the keyword preview before watching videos motivated
them to learn English. They explained that it was easier for them to remember
and understand vocabulary in the video which they had previously taught by the
researcher during the pre-listening stage. Overall, students agreed that videos
were beneficial in learning English, and that English subtitles in video movies
were an excellent aid to learning English
REFERENCES
Woottipong,
Kretsai. 2014. “Effect of Using Video Materials in the Teaching of Listening
Skills for University Students” (Vol 6. 4). Macrothink Institude
Hamouda, Arafat. 2013. “ An
Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi Students
in the EL Listening Classroom” (vol 2. 2 ). Hr mars
Gilakjani,
Abbas Pourhossein. 2011. ”A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners' English Listening
Comprehension and the Strategies for Improvement”. ( Vol 5 2 ). Manufactured in
Finland.
Mousavi,
Seyyed Ahmad. 2012. ” The Effect of Authentic Versus Non-authentic Aural Materials on EFL Learners’
Listening Comprehension” ( vol 2 1)
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Gottlieb, Andrew. Peer Counseling: Skills and Perspectives. ”Listening skill”.
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