The Effect of YouTube on Speaking and Listening Skills of Students

Abstract

In an English as Foreign Language context like Saudi Arabia, university business students face a difficult challenge to speak in English and to understand what is spoken. The students don’t have the opportunity in their daily life to listen to native speakers in or outside the classroom, but they are expected to listen to the text book audios in the classes spoken by the native speakers of English. Therefore, the difficulty rises in Listening and Speaking Skills Course as the students are not exposed to the British accent. In order to solve this problem, the researcher used YouTube videos spoken by the native speakers in the experimental group, and the control group just had the normal practice of listening to only the textbook audios. The researcher adopted quasi-experimental design with pretest and posttest in both control and experimental groups and analyzed the performance of the students using SPSS and Excel. The study proved that the results of experimental group improved significantly in their listening comprehension skills and performed better in their presentations than the control group. In the English as Foreign Language contexts, where business students fail to have exposure to the native accent of English, YouTube videos can make a great contribution in improving their listening and speaking skills.