Android App Development for Teaching Reduced Forms of EFL Listening Comprehension to Decrease Cognitive Load

Abstract

As globalization becomes a trend, the ability to communicate in English became one of the most important skills. Comparing to speaking, reading, and listening, most of the English learners considers listening to be the most difficult skill to acquire. The traditional way of teaching English as a second language mostly involves in slow and clear pronunciations. However, learners have difficulties learning through the traditional method. Many second language learning researchers pointed out that the reduced forms of English pronunciation have caused the difficulty in learning English for students [12]. The best way to learn the reduced form of English pronunciation is to listen to an extensive amount of English conversations in real world situations [9, 10, 11]. Movies and TV series can reflect real life situations; therefore, they are recommended for learning the reduced form of English according to many pieces of research [5]. Subtitles are often used to assist the understanding of the English learning videos. The learners may focus on the reading of the subtitles and tend to neglect the listening section. This research aims to select videos suitable for language learning, and also to develop a system that uses the App Inventor 2, an application developed by the MIT Center for Mobile Learning, to train the pronunciation of the students and enhance the listening ability of the students.