scholarly journals Teach how to Listen: The Effect of Listening Strategy Instruction on Documentary Video Comprehension

Author(s):  
Fatemeh Hosseini

Developments in broadcast and multimedia technology have generated a readily available and vast supply of videos for use in second and foreign language learning contexts. However, without pedagogical direction learners are unlikely to be able to deal with the complexities of this authentic listening resource, and strategy instruction may be one route to augmenting comprehension (Cross, J, 2009). The essence of this experimental study was to investigate the impact of teaching listening strategy on comprehension of documentary videos. For the purpose of this study, 54 advanced EFL students, 27 in experimental group and 27 in control group, participated in this study procedure. In 10-week-period, the experimental group went through a well-scheduled instruction in listening strategy. On the other hand, the control group wasn’t received any instruction in listening strategy. The finding of this study has revealed that teaching listening comprehension strategies has significant influence on comprehension of authentic documentary videos

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 210-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ali Rahimi ◽  
Samira Mouri

This study aimed to explore the impact of computer-assisted language learning on Iranian EFL students’ vocabulary learning. Participants of the study were 76 students – 29 males and 47 females – learning English as a foreign language in Parto, Sadr, Poyesh and Andishe Institutes in Ahvaz who were selected after taking the Nelson English Language Test as a proficiency test. They were randomly divided into two groups. One group was taken as control and the other as experimental group. Both groups participated in the teacher-made test of vocabulary, Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), and Word-Associates Test (WAT) as pre-test. During class sessions the control group was taught the vocabulary, in the conventional way, through the printed textbook while the experimental group taught by the software version of the same book. Three ANCOVAs were run to compare the performance of experimental and control groups after the treatment period. The results of the ANCOVAs revealed that using vocabulary learning software was more effective than using printed book on vocabulary learning, vocabulary breadth, and vocabulary depth of the participants. The results of the present study could help EFL course book designers, foreign language institutes, educational planners, material developers, teachers, and learners to provide a better context for EFL learning. Keywords: computer-assisted instruction, computer-assisted language learning, information communication technology, vocabulary breadth, vocabulary teaching software.  


Author(s):  
А.И. Дубских

Стремительное развитие информационно-коммуникационных технологий, расширение международных связей в области экономики, науки, культуры и образования сделало владение иностранным языком одним из ключевых компонентов профессиональной компетентности специалиста. Иностранный язык в вузе превращается из просто дисциплины в инструмент получения профессиональной информации. Предметно-языковое интегрированное обучение (Content and Language Integrated Learning - CLIL) представляет один из целесообразных способов, позволяющих успешно устанавливать связи между профилирующими дисциплинами, а также осуществлять эффективную подготовку будущего специалиста к ведению профессионального общения с коллегами на иностранном языке, что и определяет актуальность нашей работы. В статье описываются принципы предметно-языкового интегрированного обучения, его преимущества и проблемы использования в учебном процессе. Цель статьи - определить влияние CLIL на улучшение изучения учащимися лексики и выяснить, есть ли разница между прогрессом студентов, применявших CLIL на занятиях, и теми, кто опирался на традиционные методы. Для проведения исследования были отобраны студенты, которые прошли обучение в экспериментальной и контрольной группах. Студенты экспериментальной группы активно использовали методы CLIL. Результаты показали, что студенты экспериментальной группы демонстрируют более высокий уровень квалификации и более высокую коммуникативную компетентность, чем их сверстники. Однако в процессе использования методики CLIL и преподаватели, и учащиеся столкнулись с рядом трудностей. Тем не менее автор приходит к выводу, что у CLIL есть потенциал для лучшего понимания профессионального контента при изучении иностранного языка. Полученными выводами могут воспользоваться преподаватели, методисты, исследователи, разработчики образовательных программ. The rapid development of information and communication technologies, the expansion of international ties in the field of economy, science, culture and education have made foreign language knowledge one of the key components in a specialist’s professional competence. Foreign language in the university is transformed from simply discipline into a tool for obtaining professional information. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is one of the most expedient ways to successfully establish links between majoring disciplines, as well as effectively prepare a future specialist to conduct professional communication with colleagues in a foreign language, which determines the relevance of our work. The article describes the principles of students’ Content and Language Integrated Learning, their advantages and problems of implementation. The purpose of the article is to determine the impact of CLIL on improving students’ study of vocabulary and to find out if there is a difference between the progress in students’ using CLIL in classes and those who have relied on traditional methods. The study selected students who were trained in experimental and control groups. Students in the experimental group actively used CLIL methods. The results showed that students in this experimental group demonstrate higher skill levels and higher communicative competence than their peers. However, in the process of using the CLIL methodology, both teachers and students faced a number of difficulties. The author concludes that CLIL has the potential to better understand professional content through foreign language learning. These results can be used by teachers, methodologists, researchers, and developers of educational programs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raniah Kabooha ◽  
Tariq Elyas

The present study sought to examine the improvement in vocabulary comprehension and retention of Saudi English as foreign language female students at King Abdul Aziz University as a result of integrating YouTube in their reading classes. The study also investigated the perceptions of both students as well as teachers towards the inclusion of YouTube on the development of vocabulary. One hundred female intermediate level students aged between 18-20 years old participated in the study. Students were divided into two groups: an experimental group who watched YouTube during the reading activities and a control group who was not exposed to the videos. Data were collected using pre-tests and post-tests in addition to questionnaires. The findings of the study reveal that the group who viewed the YouTube clips outperformed the group who was not exposed to YouTube videos in the posttest. The results clearly show that YouTube provided statistically significant effects on the students' vocabulary acquisition. The findings of the study indicate that the participants positively viewed the use of YouTube in their lessons. The findings also revealed significant improvement in the students’ vocabulary achievement. The implications of the findings are discussed within the context of foreign language learning and teaching.


Author(s):  
Foo Terng Hoe ◽  
◽  
Teck Heng Lim ◽  
Boon Yih Mah ◽  
◽  
...  

Listening skills are important skills that need to be mastered by foreign language learners. Listening skills have, however, often been neglected in the teaching and learning process. This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using WhatsApp messenger as an instructional tool in enhancing listening skills. This experimental research employs the two-group pre-test post-test design. Two groups of 30 students who enrolled in the Introductory Mandarin course in one of the public universities in Malaysia took part in the study. During the study, the experimental group of 30 students underwent listening drills and exercises using WhatsApp messenger as the treatment, while another 30 students in the control group were taught by another lecturer using the conventional method of teaching listening skills. Listening test scores of before and after the treatment were compared and analyzed using Independent Samples t-Test to identify the significant level of the difference between the scores of these two groups. The findings show no significant difference in the listening pre-test scores between both control and experimental groups. However, after the treatment, the listening scores of the experimental group students are significantly better than that of the control group students. These results indicate that WhatsApp messenger is a useful instructional tool to teach listening skills in foreign language. The findings of this study could be used as a reference for further development of WhatsApp messenger as an instructional tool to enhance listening skills, overcome the constraints on teaching time, and improve the pedagogy as well as the instructions of foreign language learning.


Author(s):  
Marcel Pikhart ◽  
Blanka Klimova

This study concerns aspects of positive psychology connected to foreign language learning (FLL) in an older healthy generation. The positive psychology perspective stresses the positive aspects of improved wellbeing in participants who engage in various activities, particularly mental and brain-training practices. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore older people’s subjective feelings connected to their FLL as one of the crucial ways to improve their quality of life (QoL). The objective of the research was to determine the subjective satisfaction level of the participants of a second language (L2) acquisition course. The research sample (experimental group) consisted of 105 respondents who were Czech citizens and 55+ years old. Two control groups were set up. The first (young control) consisted of 102 young adults (university students), also Czech citizens, aged between 19 and 23 years. The second control group (elderly control) consisted of 102 subjects older than 55 years, similar in age to the experimental group. A standardized online questionnaire survey was the principal research method, identical both for the experimental and control groups. The findings clearly showed that language training significantly improved the subjective positive feelings and wellbeing of the older participants, regardless of their objective progress in FLL itself. These results stood in opposition to the young control group and were different from the elderly control group. The results revealed that FLL is an effective tool for enhancing the overall wellbeing of older people, which was shown in their expression of their feelings of happiness, satisfaction, and positive motivation to learn an L2. In addition, FLL objectively affected their mental health in a positive way and expanded their social networks. Moreover, FLL was a meaningful activity for them, despite the weak objective learning outcomes due to the decline of cognitive functions, helping them find their general purpose of life, as well as life motivation as expressed in the survey. These findings are crucial, as it has already been proven that wellbeing is directly connected with good health and longevity. Therefore, national governments and all stakeholders dealing with the present issue of the aging population should pay undivided attention to the enhancement of older people’s wellbeing by all possible intervention approaches, including FLL. There is limited research into the issue and the findings of this investigation could be an impetus for further research into the topic from the perspectives of cognitive science, psychology, and psycholinguistics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002205742110319
Author(s):  
Ehsan Namaziandost ◽  
Mohammad Hasan Razmi ◽  
Anastasia Atabekova ◽  
Tatyana Shoustikova ◽  
Bibigul H. Kussanova

There has been an ongoing debate on the effectiveness of spaced and massed distribution instruction in second/foreign language learning. A number of studies in the literature have investigated the impacts of spacing effect on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ vocabulary acquisition. This study aims to expand the body of existing research by exploring the impact of spaced versus massed distribution instruction on EFL learners’ vocabulary recall and retention. To this end, the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT) was administered to 120 Iranian EFL students to determine their level of English proficiency. Accordingly, 75 intermediate students were selected and randomly assigned to three equivalent groups: two experimental groups, namely spaced instruction ( n = 25) and massed instruction ( n = 25), and one control group ( n = 25). After administering a pretest, the participants in both experimental groups received two different modes of instruction. The massed instruction group attended one intensive session to learn each set of target vocabularies; the spaced instruction group, on the contrary, had three sessions at irregular time intervals to learn the same vocabularies. The control group studied the same vocabularies but received no vocabulary-focused instructions. Overall, 180 vocabularies were taught to the students during a 12-week period (15 vocabularies per week). The instructions in each group took 60 min each week. Using a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest design, the students first took a receptive vocabulary pretest before the treatment. One week after the treatment, a receptive vocabulary posttest was administered. Finally, after a 4-week interval, the students took the delayed posttest. The results revealed that the spaced instruction group significantly outperformed the massed instruction group on both immediate and delayed posttests. The findings lend support to the modulation of spaced instruction into the curricula in instructional settings as a valuable vocabulary instruction technique to promote vocabulary learning in real classroom environments.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 236-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serhat Guzel ◽  
Selami Aydin

The number of studies that focus on the impact of Second Life (SL) as a virtual language learning tool on speaking achievements of EFL learners is quite limited. Thus, this paper aims to provide insight for SL’s effect on Turkish EFL learners’ speaking achievement levels. Forty-four EFL learners from Balikesir University participated in this experimental research. The participants were divided into two groups as an experimental group of 20 learners and a control group consisting of 24 students. An interview grading their speaking performance was administered to both groups as pre-test and post-tests. While the control group participants took traditional speaking classes, the experimental group did the same speaking activities on SL. Considering the interview scores, results indicated that learners who used SL had a better performance than the ones who participated in traditional activities.  Keywords: english as a foreign language, second life, speaking, achievement.


SAGE Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 215824402095317
Author(s):  
Rustam Shadiev ◽  
Yu-Cheng Chien ◽  
Yueh-Min Huang

Scholars suggest that not every student completely comprehends the content of a lecture in a foreign language as the medium of instruction, especially in the case of those with low language ability. To facilitate comprehension of lectures in a foreign language, learning content was presented to students in multiple modalities; that is, in addition to verbal (speech of the instructor) and visual (lecture slides) content, texts generated by speech-to-text recognition (STR) or speech-enabled language translation (SELT) were shown to the students. The goal was to compare how these two additional content modalities (i.e., STR-texts vs. SELT-texts) facilitate student comprehension of lecture content. Because processing multimodal content requires additional cognitive resources, another goal was to explore whether STR-texts versus SELT-texts impose any cognitive load on the students. To this end, two groups of students were recruited, where they attended two lectures at the intermediate and advanced levels. STR-texts were shown to a control group, and SELT-texts were shown to an experimental group. The posttest results and the cognitive load of the students in both groups after each lecture were compared. Four main findings were obtained: (a) The experimental group outperformed the control group on both posttests. However, when student language ability was considered, the difference was statistically significant for low ability students only; (b) there was not a significant between-group difference in cognitive load; however, if student language ability was considered, a significant between-group difference existed during the more difficult lecture; (c) between-group differences in self-efficacy were statistically insignificant; and (d) associations among some research variables were found. Based on these results, several implications were drawn for the teaching and research community.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Fotini Gerovasiliou ◽  
Makrina Zafiri

The particular study focuses on the use of board games and argues that they are a useful and practical tool in order to stimulate six year old students’ motivation in learning topic vocabulary in a foreign language classroom. It explains how a number of ready-made board games can be adapted, according to the educational aims, the students’ age and language level in order to maximize positive results in foreign language learning. Through playing board games, young students not only become much more active, but they also anticipate coming to the learning classroom more eagerly since they involve the elements of joy, interaction, cooperation and competition. Moreover, games place the teacher in a background role, acting more as a facilitator; therefore they allow students to take on more responsibility for their learning.To this end, an experimental study design, employing both qualitative and quantitative data research tools, was adopted. The participants, who were eight students of six year old age, were divided into two groups. In the experimental group, only board games were applied in order to give students the opportunity to practise the disseminated topic vocabulary while the control group practised their vocabulary through the activities proposed by the coursebook and the worksheets which were constructed by the researchers. A pre-test and post-tests were administered to students before and after the action research and semi-structured interviews with the students of the experimental group were conducted in order to probe into the students’ views concerning the proposed tool and method of instruction. The analysis of the tests indicated a difference in favor of the experimental group. Finally, the findings of the students’ responses revealed the beneficial effects of using board games to stimulate vocabulary learning to students of the specific age group and language level. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Yue Mao ◽  
Yifei Zhou

Listening occupies one of the most preliminary parts in foreign language learning and becomes more and more important. Pre-listening process of listening comprehension owns two models, bottom-up and top-down. The latter that emphasizes the introduction of background knowledge is tightly related to content schema. The aim of the study is to examine the impact of content schema on listening comprehension and to find whether there is difference of the impact of content schema on students of different levels of listening comprehension by conducting an experiment. About 189 participants from Zhejiang University were divided into control group (CG) and experiment group (EG). Both the two groups did pretests, tests and questionnaires. CG and EG were separately divided into high- and low-level groups based on the pretest scores. Independent sample T-test was used to analyze data. The results showed that content schema negatively affected listening comprehension and it had stronger impact on students with low listening proficiency.


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