The Effective of English-Only Instruction on English Listening Course

Abstract

Most students in Taiwan who are EFL learners have few, if any, chances to speak English in their daily lives, so the English classroom is the most important place to provide a comprehensive English-language environment. Therefore, educational authorities promote English-only instructional environments, hoping to raise students' abilities in English. However, it is rather difficult to implement such immersion programs since many teachers who are not native-English speakers do not have a complete command over spoken English. Moreover, many students are not interested in listening to or learning to speak English because they don't feel that they will have the need to use it. Some educators are skeptical of the benefits of English-only instruction. In order to determine the best method of EFL instruction in Taiwan, the researcher conducted an experiment on two classes of first-year students of the five-year associate-degree program in the Chang Gung Institute of Technology. There were 50 students in one class and 52 students in the other. For 10 to 15 minutes of each 50-minute listening class, the researcher used English-only instruction in the experimental class and bilingual (Chinese and English) instruction in the control class. After each instruction period ended, the students listened to a conversation and then took a post-test. A total of eight post-tests were analyzed to investigate which instructional technique was more effective in helping students learn English. In addition, a questionnaire was administered at the end of the semester to gage the students' perception of English-only instruction. The results of the study revealed that the students who received English-only instruction did not achieve higher academic scores, although both groups of students believed that English-only instruction could and would improve their English listening abilities and help them achieve higher scores on English listening courses. The researcher conducted this study in the hope that the results would serve as a reference for college English teachers when they decide whether or not to use English-only instruction in their classes.