Abstract
This study aimed at investigating the impact of mobile learning on EFL learners’ listening anxiety and listening comprehension. Fifty students of two intermediate English courses were selected and sampled as the experimental (n=25) and control (n=25) groups. Students’ entry level of listening anxiety was assessed by foreign language listening anxiety questionnaire and their listening comprehension was assessed by Key English Test (KET) prior to the study. For one semester the experimental group did their listening activities by using podcasts listened to on their mobile phones and/or portable digital media players. Meanwhile the control group used their desktop computers to do their listening activities. The results of data analysis showed that listening anxiety of the experimental group reduced significantly after the experiment. Further, a significant difference between the experimental and control groups’ listening comprehension was found in favor of the experimental group at the end of the experiment.
Highlights
Listening is an important language skill that contributes to the internalization of language rules and facilitates the emergence of other language skills (Vandergrift, 1997)
Students’ entry level of listening anxiety was assessed by foreign language listening anxiety questionnaire and their listening comprehension was assessed by Key English Test (KET) prior to the study
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of listening to podcasts on mobile devices -in comparison to desktop personal computers- on EFL learners’ listening anxiety and listening comprehension
Summary
Listening is an important language skill that contributes to the internalization of language rules and facilitates the emergence of other language skills (Vandergrift, 1997). Listening is an interactive process of recognition, perception, and understanding of the oral input (Vandergrift, 2002) and “an intention to complete a communication” Listening has been reported to be a difficult skill due to the features inherent in oral input such as phonological and lexical features (Flowerdew, 1994); reduced forms (Ito, 2001); invisible word boundaries (Weber & Cutler, 2006); and irregular pauses, false starts, and intonation patterns (Gilmore, 2007). Listening can be difficult for some listeners due to their limited processing skill (Buck, 2001) and lack of control over the speech rate (Osada, 2004), or inadequate knowledge of vocabulary, topics, and accents (Buck, 2001)
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