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Besides, the development of technology has been growing rapidly also and becoming a tool in
order to support further language learning. This research has been conducted in an effort to identify
the background of listening comprehension tasks and language recall based on the multimedia
environment with computers among audio, video and multimedia. And this study is an attempt to
find out a way of the development of listening skills, thence applying multimedia for other
Assumption
The key assumption of the article is that using multimedia in listening comprehension has more
effect than the combination between audio or video plus pen and paper.
Subjects
Participating in this study are the learners who came from Europe, France, Germany or Spain were
all final year undergraduates on a business and languages degree at the University of
Instruments
Three different sets of data were conducted in the study. The first consisted of learner responses
to listening comprehension tasks, the second a set of cloze tests asking learners to recall the exact
language used in the listening texts, and the third learner responses to a questionnaire about the
Hypothesis
Four hypotheses of the article are: First, the ones who use multimedia in listening comprehension
have got more effect than the combination between audio or video plus pen and paper; Second,
The more acquisition of multimedia tasks, the better language recall; Third, the unique features of
multimedia brings successful experience for learners; Last, multimedia is a positive, effective and
Procedure
With the various materials such as listening texts, worksheets, listening task types, cloze tests and
questionnaire, the research was prepared in order to try to explain any different results in learner
success rates with the three different media. The study also used a five-point Likert scale to
investigate learners' opinions about the study. Learners have first finished the task on screen and
give feedback on the paper. Next, the multimedia tasks were completed by clicking on a mouse
(texts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6) and by using a drag and drop exercise (text 4), all these were finished on
computer screen.
Results
This section puts forward the results of the three sets of data collected during the study, the
comprehension task success rates, the language recall success rates and the questionnaire on
multimedia. Table 1 shows that the data collected from the multimedia comprehension tasks has
more efficient than from paper and pen. Table 2 shows the data collected from the language recall
exercise. Table 3 shows learners reactions to the features of multimedia that might encourage
more successful listening. Table 4 shows the responses that the features of multimedia which might
be supposed to facilitate comprehension and learning are valued by learners. All these data
supported Hypothesis 1, 2, 3, 4.
Conclusions
The results show that the possible explanations for the greater success rates of multimedia. It first
mentions the efficiency of the multimedia environment, then the role of the feedback and its impact
on comprehension, and finally relates these comprehension gains to possible language acquisition.
Critique of article
Problem
Although the study show the importance of using multimedia in listening comprehension and the
language recall and the results of that research support for the effectiveness of multimedia, we
have to question about some problem of the study. One of them is the study's sample size was not
big enough, just about fifty learners who are motivated and "academic" English language
undergraduates. They were already "computer literate". Second, there is no listening skills test or
any language proficiency was undertaken to verify the homogeneity of the learners. This may
produce incorrect results. However, the methods showed significantly higher comprehension
success rates, language recall and learner preferences for multimedia, so I think these goals of the
Review of literature
The author gave a lot of facts about the effectiveness of computer-based multimedia on listening
comprehension skill in this study but some are not really related to the topics.
However, there are enough related literature which could have been mentioned in the study. The
argument clearly stated the importance of listening skills like "the most fundamental language
support these ones, but I myself realize that the hypotheses have repeated goals that can make
Subjects
The subjects of this study were not clear when mentioned about the number of students who
participate in the test. Also demographic characteristics of the subjects (for example, gender, age,
Furthermore, these students are not a representative sample when they are at a high level (final
comparison with the average, and most had used a similar multimedia language learning CD-
with paper and pen provided at the beginning of each session. These short tests are briefly
The second instrument was the multimedia tasks on computer screen but the content of the task
did not mention clearly (just appeared 2 types of task are tick or a cross and true/false statements).
sections inadequately makes readers confused about the reasons which support the hypotheses. In
the other hand, in the Dicussion, the study comes to some clearly explanations for the greater
success rates of multimedia. It first discusses the efficiency of the multimedia environment, then
the role of the feedback and its impact on comprehension, and finally relates these comprehension
Question 4 in listening task on the multimedia-based show the efficiency of the use of a computer
interface for all of the components of listening tasks. That helps learners' listening ability become
easier and it takes less time more than using paper and pen. Finishing the tests with the arrangement
of statements per listening text was on-screen at one time seemed to help to focus learners' attention
Feedback is a further reason for the greater success rate on the multimedia comprehension. A key
here is learners could response all the parts of the tasks while listening. Learners are aware of
knowledge during the listening and when they do wrong, they can be fixed immediately.
The results of this study as seen in table 2 indicate that higher levels of comprehension and
language recall were achieved while listening in the multimedia environment. But the explanation