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A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE EFFECTS OF THE USE

OF MULTIMEDIA ON LISTENING COMPREHENSION


Summary of article
Introduction
Most of English teachers nowadays concern to learners' language ability especially listening skill.

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

language learning and for other learning contexts.

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

Wolverhampton. They themselves regarded as advanced learners of English with fairly

background knowledge and language ability.

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

use of multimedia for listening.

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

motivating way to learn language.

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

study are well indicated.

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

skill" (Oxford, 1993).


Hypotheses
The hypotheses are divided into 4 cleary and specific parts. And at the end of the study, the results

support these ones, but I myself realize that the hypotheses have repeated goals that can make

readers have a little bit refuse.

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,

SES) was not reported in the article.

Furthermore, these students are not a representative sample when they are at a high level (final

year undergraduates on a business and languages degree at the University of Wolverhampton) in

comparison with the average, and most had used a similar multimedia language learning CD-

ROM in their classes

Instruments and Procedure


Two instruments were used in this study. One was doing the listening test through audio/video

with paper and pen provided at the beginning of each session. These short tests are briefly

described but their reliability and validity is not mentioned at all.

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).

A lot of materials were provided but some are useless.

Results and Discussion


The results based on 4 tables were 4 hypotheses that had given before. But the explanation of these

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

gains to possible language acquisition.

Multimedia and efficiency of focus

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

on listening only for that specific element of the message.

Feedback and the monitoring of comprehension

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.

Multimedia, comprehensibility, language recall and language acquisition

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

is still not reasonable.

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