The Impact of Motivating Iranian EFL Learners via Visuals on Their Listening Comprehension

Abstract

Teaching listening has always been a big challenge for many foreign or second language teachers. One of the most important factors in this respect is the students' lack of interest in doing so. In order to solve this problem the use of visuals as a motivating factor for improving the students listening comprehension is suggested. A number of 150 elementary students were selected. They were divided into 2 language proficiency homogeneous groups. To compare the change in the degree of their motivation two sets of questionnaire were given to them. The control group was exposed to the listening material without seeing any visuals and just having a short oral pre listening activity, while the experimental group were shown a picture of the situation in which the conversation was taking place, while some predicting questions were raised. Then a listening comprehension test was given to both groups. By using statistical procedures a correlation was taken for comparing the motivation and listening comprehension scores and a t-test was measured for comparing the listening comprehension scores of the experimental group and the control groups. The results indicated that the use of visuals improves the listening comprehension of the subjects using visuals also improves their motivation.