Abstract
One of the most important tasks of English teaching in Taiwan is finding an efficient method of teaching English listening. In the past decade, the use of video to teach listening comprehension has been widely examined and discussed (Cooper et al, 1991; Chung, 1999; Stempleski and Tomalin, 1990; Katchen, 1996; Baltova, 1994; Chiang, 1996, 1999; Secules et al, 1992; Synder, 1988). Rubin (1990) states that watching video is an active process in which listeners choose and interpret the given information coming from auditory and visual cues to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express. That is, the listener uses his or her own way to give meaning to the current given message. This process requires the use of the listener’s background knowledge, or schema (Rost, 2002; Chafe, 1994; Carrell and Eisterhold 1988). Videos provide plenty of opportunities for the listeners to make their own interpretation and, meanwhile, practice their listening. In recent years, the rapid development of video has brought about DVDs. DVDs are considered to be the most advanced type of video. DVD means “Digital Versatile Disc” or “the Digital Video Disc.” DVDs preserve most advantages of traditional videotapes, and have been produced with much more subtle uniqueness, such as more than two visual and audio channels in different languages, and the separation into chapters. In these recent two years, some studies on DVD films have been conducted (Lin, 2001, 2002; Markham et al, 2001). However, these studies either focused on the discussion of DVD captions or were workshops, but not formal studies. In addition, still few studies have been formally conducted about the influence of DVD films on specific linguistic skills, such as listening, speaking, writing, and reading of language teaching, and moreover, so far in Taiwan, no research has been conducted to investigate the relationship between the use of DVD films and the teaching of English listening. Therefore, in this current study, the effectiveness of using DVD films to teach listening comprehension was examined. The five research questions were: 1. Does instruction using DVD films help college freshmen, English majors, improve their English listening comprehension? 2. What characteristics of DVD films can enhance L2 listening skills? 3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of using DVD films in English listening class? 4. What are students’ attitudes toward the use of DVD films in teaching listening? 5. What are some pedagogical implications of using DVD films as the main material in an English listening class? This current study lasted for a whole school year, from September 2002 to June 2003. A pilot study, whose results formed part of the formal study, was conducted in the fall semester, 2002. The designs of the research method of the pilot study and the formal study were the same for both semesters. The participants were thirty-three students in the Foreign Language Department at a national university in northern Taiwan. These participants, whose English proficiency was considered as intermediate level, were enrolled in the course “Freshmen English Listening and Speaking.” All of the teaching materials were developed from DVD films. Teaching activities were designed relevant to the content of each movie. There were two teachers for the course, and the researcher in this study was one of the teachers. Other instrumental tools in this study were questionnaires and while-listening comprehension tests. The results of the statistical analyses indicate that college freshmen’s listening did improve through the instruction of using DVD films in a motivating learning environment with lower level of anxiety after a whole school year. Moreover, the correlation between the enjoyment and the effectiveness of certain movies were investigated, and the correlation coefficients were moderate to strong. This study preliminarily conducted a formally-designed investigation on the correlation between DVD films and teaching English listening, and for future research, the results of the current research encourage researchers to examine the efficiency of the use of DVD films in other aspects of English learning, and set a model for future research design.