The use of Authentic material in practicing Extensive listening
¥ Abstract
This study aims to find out the role of authentic material in extensive listening on practicing listening skill by EFL students at university level. The objects of the study are first year students who major in English for Science and Technology. The participants are divided into two groups. One group practice their listening skill with authentic material while the other work on with simplified material. This research uses experimental method. The instrument used in collecting data was multiple choice test. The total items of the test are 20 items.
¥ Introduction to the problem/issue and its context and significance
Languages are generally taught and assessed in terms of the ‘four skills’: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, among the four skills, listening takes most of human’s communication time. The research of Gilman and Moody points out that a person spends 50% of his time listening while communicating with others while he only uses 25-30% time for speaking, 10-15% reading, and less than 10% time does he spend on writing (Holden, 2008). In other words, listening plays a greater role in communication, comparing to other language skills. Despite that, in English language teaching, listening seems to be neglected, and hardly receives any attention in ELT research.
Thanks to the work of L2 listening scholars such as Christine Goh, Larry Vandergrift and John Field, people start to pay more attention to this skill as stated by Renandya in the interview by Paul, 2017. The rising trend leads to a new concept, extensive listening.
The key conditions when practicing listening skills by extensive listening are quite similar to extensive readings. Learners should listen with enjoyment and no pressure. Thus, choosing appropriate material is crucial. However, a lot of studies was conducted focus on the effectiveness of extensive listening but hardly pay any attention to the material used in extensive listening
¥ Explanation of relevant concepts/constructs
The concept of extensive listening has a strong link with the input hypothesis by Krashen, and supported many scholars. It is believed that learners only can acquire language and use it as a n effective communicator if they received a large amount of input (Ellis, 2004). Nation, 2007 also mention input as one of the four strands in language learning, which he called meaning-focus strands. Learners are advised to learn through a lot of reading and listening. Input is required to be comprehensible and meaningful to learners since not all input can be processed, some of the input is filtered out, and only comprehensible input is noticed then integrated and become implicit knowledge. Therefore, L2 learners are advised to practice extensive listening, as learners have a chance to choose material accordingly to their interest and ability.
¥ Literature review
Listening
There are many different definitions of listening. According to Purdy (1991), listening is a process in which stimuli such as sounds and echoes are attached meaning when transmitting to the brain. With the same opinion, Nichols and Lewis (1991) explain it can be understood by combining “meaning to the aural symbols perceived”. Meanwhile, some researchers show that listening is “more than just hearing and to understand and interpret the meaning of conversation” (Thomlison, 1984). Each author has their own way or opinion to express the definitions of listening, but by and large, listening is a work of the brain. It helps people receive information and simultaneously convert them into something we can understand.
Learning Listening skills in class
Although, listening account for a massive amount of time in communication activities, it is neglected by most language learners. Learners have the tendency to pay more attention in grammar and vocabularies. Therefore, even students who are master at grammar and at a high level of lexicology find it difficult to get the information when listening to a spoken text. They keep asking to stop the tape since they cannot remember those details they have heard. That brings out the negative environment when it comes to listening classes (Ducker & Saunders, 2014). They hardly can enjoy the activities, which may prevent them to acquire the language (Krashen, 1987; Krashen, 1988)
Most real life listening activities involves the interaction between speakers and listeners. From the context, listeners can catch the meaning of unfamiliar words, or recognize words more easily. However, in class, there is no interaction as students are listening to a tape. They may find the listening task a lot more challenging than it actually is because there is no cue for them to get the meaning of the text. Teachers focus on teaching strategies, which is unrealistic and inapplicable, since not any strategies work with all students. (Renandya & Farrell, 2011).
Extensive listening
Brown (2011, 36) believed that asking students to do listening task by asking question after listening to an audio is considered as a test (cited in Schmidt, 2016). Besides, “listening is best learned through listening” (Renadya & Farrell, 2011)
In order to improve listening skills for L2 learners, many methods are built and applied, and one of them is Extensive listening. Extensive listening is not about listening to specific details or the exact words. In extensive listening, learners have their chance to enjoy the whole content of the text. It is suggested that this helps acquire language in a natural way (Renandya, 2016; Chang, 2016, Dupuy, 1999; Krashen, 1996) L2 learners also have a great opportunity to develop their language ability, since they have more exposure to the target language.
Material used in Extensive listening
Similar to extensive reading, extensive listening can be operated anywhere at any time, as long as students receive a large amount of comprehensible input. Renadya (2012) presented some criteria in choosing an appropriate material for extensive listening which includes: how meaningful is the text, the listeners’ interest, comprehension level, and language features.
Widodo &Rozak (2016) suggested that extensive listening material should share similar features as the material used in extensive reading. The material is easy to understand and brings personal enjoyment. Low level learners also can get some useful sources from the internet, it can be youtube video, or audio books.
L2 learners when practicing listening skills can choose between simplified material and authentic material. However, the purpose of extensive listening is to encourage learners to practice listening with high frequency and enjoyment. Therefore, learners should carefully decide which one is more suitable for their learning purpose.
Authentic material
There are several explanations for authentic materials. However, we could consider authentic material as a “real-life listening”. It is very interesting that whenever mention to EL, people might think about authentic material. In fact, authentic material can be a good source for practicing Extensive listening as well as the features of authentic materials meet most of criteria of an appropriate extensive listening material.
Using authentic material seem to help student to improve their comprehension ability (Sabet
& Mahsefat, 2012; Dewi, 2018) However, linguistic scholars have been debating about the usefulness of using authentic material in different proficiency level. Some researchers think only learners at intermediate or higher level of language proficiency should use authentic material (Kilikkaya, 2014; Kim, 2000), since The authentic material can cause frustration to learners at lower level. They may feel de-motivated when confronting to new vocabularies or complicated structure, and give up even before trying to practice properly.
In contrast, Mc Neil (1994) and Miller (2005) share the same opinion that learners at the lowest level should use authentic material as the foundation for learning that language in the future. Besides, according to Field (Richard & Renandya, 2002; Devinta & Ratri, 2014), learners should experience authentic material at early stage since it helps learners get use to the target language in real life. The research conducted by Devinta & Ratri (2014) shows that low level students did not perform as well with the authentic material. However, it is claimed that the lack of exposure to real life language and various accents is the main explanation for the students’ performance. Learners should consider failure as a motivation to study.
Kim (2015) also proved that authentic material are not effective for low proficiency level learners. Only students in pre-intermediate level or above are beneficial from using authentic material.
Besides, authentic materials were proven to play an important role in creating enjoyment in practicing listening for the students as well as developing their willingness to use authentic material outside classroom (Zhafarghandi, Barekat, & Homaei, 2014). Sabet & Mahsefat (2012) also agreed there is a positive correlation between students’ motivation and the use of authentic material. Compared to traditional-based_instruction in listening class, using authentic material is more useful and effective (Kim, 2015) Students, whose language levels varied, in Akira (2013) also showed that they have a lot more motivation when using authentic material. However, in Vossoughi & Morad (2010) there is no significant difference in terms of learners’ motivation. It should be noted that the participant of this study is high school students and there was no clarify about the participants’ language ability.
However, the present researches are not clear about the effectiveness and low proficiency students’ attitude towards using authentic material in practicing listening skills, in particularly extensive listening. Extensive listening is only effective if the input is comprehensible and enjoyable. Learners also need to practice a lot to see the improvement. Therefore, this research is designed to find out
1, The effectiveness of using authentic material in extensive listening
2, The attitude of students towards using authentic material in extensive listening
Participant:
The participants are 1st year students of School of Foreign Languages, Hanoi University of Science and Technology. All students are EFL learners who major in English as science and Technology; English translation and interpretation. The participants need to finished their first semester before taking part in the study. Which means they have learned basic courses in developing English skills that are listening, writing, reading and speaking. The listening skills in the second semester focused about comprehensive listening, and in the second semester, they learn about the note-taking skills for listening course to get ready for practicing interpretation skills in the third semester. The participants are from18 to 19 years old. However, they come from different places of Vietnam. The reason why we concern about this issue is that different places in Vietnam have different learning condition. For example, in Hanoi, students have more opportunities to practice their English skills. However, in the remote areas, students’ changes for practicing English skills specially listening skills is still limited. Therefore, although they study in the same class, their listening level is completely different.
Procedure
All the participants will sit for a listening pre-test examination. After that, the students will be divided into two groups. Students in group A continue to practice listening according to the simplified material provided by the school. Students in group B will practice with authentic material. The types of material are variable, audio books, youtube videos, sit coms, etc. All participants are asked to develop their own listening journal to keep track on their practice. After 8 weeks, students will sit for a listening post-test examination. It is hoped that the listening skills of those who practice with authentic material according to guideline, and the motivation of the students in the same group will improve compare with the one who do not.
For those, who participates in using extensive listening method, the researchers send them materials on Monday, Wednesday and Friday through email every week, and they are always chosen carefully. The learners’ jobs are listening to those materials and taking notes at home or wherever and whenever they feel comfortable with. To serve the purpose of extensive listening, chosen materials are not only diverse in contents and images but also suitable for certain targets.