Using interactive video in teaching English to develop elementary stage pupils' listening skills.

          كلية التربية

 كلية معتمدة من الهيئة القومية لضمان جودة التعليم

المجلة التربوية لتعليم الكبار – كلية التربية – جامعة أسيوط

      ======= 

Using interactive video in teaching English to develop elementary stage pupils' listening skills.

By

Dr: Hanan Ahmed Abdel-Hafez.

Dr: Saber Ahmed Galal.

Dr: Muhammad Reyad Omar.

By: Hayam Nasr Khalaf Mohamed.

}     المجلد الرابع – العدد الأول –  يناير2022م {

Adult_EducationAUN@aun.edu.eg

Abstract of the research:       

The present research aimed to investigate the effect of using Interactive Video in developing elementary stage pupils’ listening skills. The research adopted the quasi-experimental pre-posttest in terms of using an experimental group and a control one. The two groups were chosen amongst the fourth-grader at Tema public school at Sohag governorate. The experimental group studied through the interactive video, while the control group studied through lecture method. The experimental group pupils engaged in interactive video both individual and in groups two times a week for six weeks. instruments of the research included: listening skills checklist, and pre-post listening test. Results showed significant and remarkable improvement because of the positive effect of using interactive video on developing listening skills.

Keywords: interactive video, listening skills.

هدف البحث الحالي الي التحقق من أثر استخدام الفيديو التفاعلي في تطوير مهارات الاستماع لدى تلاميذ المرحلة الابتدائية. اعتمد البحث على التصميم شبه التجريبي للاختبار القبلي والبعدي من حيث استخدام مجموعة تجريبية ومجموعة ضابطه. تم اختيار المجموعتين من بين طلاب الصف الرابع من مدرسة طما، بمحافظة سوهاج.

درست المجموعة التجريبية بالفيديو التفاعلي بينما درست المجموعة الضابطة بطريقة المحاضرة. شارك تلاميذ المجموعة التجريبية في دروس وأنشطة الفيديو التفاعلية فرادي وفي مجموعات مرتين في الأسبوع لمدة ستة أشهر وتضمنت أدوات البحث: قائمة بمهارات الاستماع، اختبار الاستماع القبلي- بعدى. وأظهرت النتائج التأثير الإيجابي لاستخدام الفيديو التفاعلي في تنمية مهارات الاستماع.

الكلمات المفتاحية: الفيديو التفاعلي- مهارات الاستماع.

1. Introduction and background:

In learning English as a foreign language (EFL) context, one of the skills learners are expected to develop their ability to listen properly because it is very important. The importance of listening extends far beyond academic and professional settings. It is the first communication skill we acquire and use. In fact, humans began to listen before they were born. Listening is the ability to accurately receive and interpret messages in the communication process; it is the key to all effective communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated.  It is a selective process to observe, listen, understand, and remember the listening symbols. As Hamilton, (2013: 110), Shows that when we communicate, we spend around 55% of our time listening,24% speaking, 13% reading and only 9% writing.

Despite the importance of listening skills, there are many problems faced listening learning in elementary stage; as Yagang, (2018) agrees Saundral, and Washington, (2011:16) mentioned, the evidence shows that the listening problems come mainly from four sources.

 The message to be listened to

 the speaker

 the listener                                                                     

 and the physical setting

Also, Sejdiu, (2017) pointed out that teaching listening is neglected into classrooms and a lot of teachers consider it as time wasting. In addition to the characteristic of listening is difficult because it is visual mental process that make it difficult to describe so, the listener’s task is more challenging. Also, the listener is engaged in many processes such as, discriminating the sounds, understanding the vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpreting stress and intonation and remembering. He adds that EFL teachers haven’t used any modern technology method in teaching listening.   Moreover, teaching and learning listening have been largely ignored as an activity for language practice and improvement. Hence, a new methodology should be adopted to overcome such problems.

In addition, Hwaider study (2017) stated that listening skill seems to be the most difficult skill among all language skills. He clarified that “teaching listening skill has a set linguistic and non-linguistic problems. These linguistic problems include pronunciation, stress, intonation, and sound system. Non-linguistic problems are represented in the unavailability of the learners, teachers, classroom environment, lack of training and practicing, and the time given to the English language instruction”

The current trends in teaching listening nowadays advocate the use of technology to facilitate learning listening. Technology is important to help the learners learn listening because it gives the learners chance to access different kinds of media and aids that help them improve their listening skills; e.g., audios, videos, music, news, mp3, films, recorders, etc. As the learners can listen to native speakers, so they can learn English more accurately. Mutruk, (2018) Mentioned that videos and movies and animation movies can enhance language learning and develop listening skills. by using these media learners can choose the materials they wish to learn, they can also repeat the texts more than one time. These movies and videos can save teacher's time and make them spend more time with learners. he recommended teachers to use these videos and movies to attract learners' attentions. he recommended other researchers to search for more technological aids that help in learning language and enhance listening skills. 

Interactive Video is one of the technological aids that allow learners to control the listening process via interactive features; so, it can help them to improve and develop their listening skills with guide of the teacher. So, it encourages the learners to learn listening more effectively. Hence, the current research adopted using interactive video to develop some listening skills for elementary stage pupils.

Statement of the Problem:

The problem of the current research is demonstrated in primary school pupils' lack of necessary listening skills. Therefore, the current research used one of modern technology tool; interactive video to develop some of the listening skills. Thus, the current research seeks to find an answer to the following question:

what is the effect of interactive video on developing some of fourth-grade primary pupils' listening skills?

The aims of the research: This research aimed at:

developing some listening skills for the fourth-grade primary pupils by using interactive video.

Materials and tools of the research:

• Listening checklist to identify listening skills necessary for fourth-grade pupils.
• Listening pre-post test used to measure pupil’s ability in listening to predict, listening to identify the speaker, listening for details, listening to short story to infer the meaning of new words and reach to the moral value, listening to identify short and long vowels.

Delimitations of the research:

This research is delimited at:

• Eighty of the fourth-grade primary pupils as EFL learners
• The following listening skills; listening to predict, listening to identify the speaker, listening for details, listening to short story to infer the meaning of new words and reach to the moral value, listening to identify short and long vowels.
• Time for English course for fourth-grade.
• Al-Waffa primary school for boys and girls Tema city, Sohag governorate.

Definitions of Terms:

Interactive video:

A non-linear, digital video technology that allows students to have their full attention to educational materials and to review each section of video as many times as they wish (Palaigeorgiou, Chloptsidou, and Lemondis, 2018, 861)

Petan and Vasiu (2013) defined interactive video as "an improved copy of video material which includes interactive elements that provide a non-linear way to transmit information similar to the World Wide Web hyperlinks".

According to the current research, Interactive video is a video that combines interactive characteristics of the computer and linear educational video. It can work with a mouse, a keyboard or a stylus, and consists of groups of moving sequences. These groups contain listening and reading subskills followed by questions that pupils answer. Then, the video supports the pupil with feedback and saves the pupil's responses.

Listening skills:

Dalal and Gulati (2017), and Purdy& Borisoff (1997) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his/ her grammar and his/ her vocabulary, and grasping the meaning.

Basaran (2005: 433), translated by Gulec, Durmus (2014), mentioned that “listening is not only done in order to set up communication, but at the same time it develops learning understanding and mental skills. It is not just the process of hearing sounds correctly; it is the whole of realize in order to understand what is heard. Listening means making choices from among what is listened to, organizing them, integrating what is transferred by the speaker with background knowledge and structuring them mentally”.

According to the current research, listening is defined as fourth-grade pupils’ ability to predict content, listen for details, infer the meaning through listening, identify short and long vowels, and identify the speaker. Listening is very important to show how much you respect the person who is talking, as it is important in the classroom because it provides the input knowledge for listening and speaking

2. Review of literature:

The nature of listening:

listening is an active and complex process which requires learners to receive sounds, attend to relevant sounds, assign meaning, and store the messages for later use. It is an active process of receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding to communicative discourse. Listening is very important to show how much you respect the person who is talking, as it is important in the classroom because it provides the input knowledge for listening and speaking.

As (Worthington, and Hauser, 2018, 5) and (Yavuz, and Celik,2017; Yildirm, 2016; Asemota, 2015), clarified the importance of listening, they stated that; listening provides input for the learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin. It helps learners; to communicate with other people, to show interest, concern and concentration, to build trust within a conversation, by allowing the speaker to communicate more easily, openly and honestly, to develop a selflessness approach, putting the speaker first, to arrive at a shared and agreed understanding and acceptance of both sides' views, and to gain a full and accurate understanding into the speaker's point of view and ideas.

Listening sub skills:

According to, (Chuanren, 2018, 255; Azarnoosh, &Zeratpishe, &Faravani, and Kargozari, 2016, 79). category listening subskills into; Low level listening subskillsthat include distinguishing sounds recognizing, intonations, and recognizing grammatical constituents, and high-level cognitive subskills, that include information selection and analyzing words, sentences, prediction, reasoning, inferencing, synthesizing, summarizing, decoding, listening and taking notes, imitating the speaker after listening, and abstracting the theme of a text.

Georgiou (2003: 7) stated that listening is an active skill that includes the use of many sub-skills such as predicting content, inferring meanings from content, listening for gist, listening for details. Some of these sub-skills, such as inferring the meaning and predicting content, should be practiced in the foreign language class. In this connection, there is necessity to introduce a brief reference to those skills; here are some of the most important sub-skills that are needed by primary stage pupils;

            Based on the review of literature related to teaching listening and related studies, the present research identified basic listening skills necessary for elementary school pupils as: identify short and long vowels, listening for details, listening to identify the speaker, listening to short story to infer the meaning of new words and reach to the moral value, listening to predict the content.

Prediction: it is an activity carries students out before listening to a text, where they predict what they are going to listen. This gives them a reason to listen, as they confirm or reject their predictions. In the classroom, prediction is a valuable stage in listening activities. As the fourth- grade curriculum has many contents that help the pupils to predict, guess and response.

            Identify the speaker: it depends on understanding the picture and paying attention to the person’s body language. Students can identify the speaker more easily by using concentration to identify who is speaking through a listening text. The forth grade syllabus has many topics that involve small conversations that help students to guess and identify the speakers through pictures when listening to the conversation

            Listen for details (scanning): it is about listening carefully, paying attention to all the words and trying to understand as much information as possible. For example, the pupils run over the oral message and look for certain points then reach to the details of the conversation according to the pictures. As the fourth-grade curriculum has a lot of conversations with questions, the pupils should listen to the conversation carefully to run quickly over the oral message and look for certain points to reach the details, after that they should answer the questions according to understanding the details.  

            Listen to short story to infer the meaning of new words and reach to the moral value: to guess the meaning of the unfamiliar words in listening and reach the moral value, pupils can use content clues represented in images and animated pictures. They may not reach the exact meaning of words, but at least they will continue listening with understanding the general meaning.

Listen to identify short and long vowels: to identify the words with short and long vowels, pupils have to distinguish between short and long vowels; such as, u vowel; (short u/ ʌ) up, cup, luck, duck, long u vowel; (long /u/ u) blue, clue, June. (short a/ æ) ant, jam, bag, hat (long a/ eI) may, say, rain, lake…..and the pupils should be able to identify words with short and long vowels through listening context, topics, songs and so on.

Interactive video

The present research suggested interactive video as a tool for teaching listening skills to elementary stage pupils.

Interactive video and language learning and teaching process:

Inthe purist to investigate the effect of using interactive video on learning and teaching process, Shahrokni, (2014) stated that educational and interactive videos are among the most influential tools in foreign language education because they are multimodal; that is, even in their basic form, they provide learners with auditory, visual, contextual, verbal, and non-verbal sources of input, which can enhance comprehension by providing comprehensible input. There were attempts to make videos more educationally purposeful through captions and subtitles that support English skills development. These subtitles can add comprehension questions that help learners attend to the materials at hand and allow educators to decide if they are progressing effectively through the martials.

Interactive video and developing listening skills

Interactive Video is one of the technological aids that allow learners to control the listening process via interactive features; so, it can help them to improve and develop their listening skills. Al-Malkey’s study (2015), clarified that the interactive video is used to develop listening skills and recommended: using the interactive video in teaching English language to develop the skills of listening as well as to develop other language skills, using learning strategies based on the integration of interactive video in teaching so that, the teaching and learning process may become a learner-centered approach, building new software based on interactive video to save time and effort and to improve language skills, using teaching aid based on audio aids for teaching English and to develop listening skills among learners.

Also, Al-Baekani & Ridwan (2018) stated that listening is difficult to learn by traditional methods. Thus, teachers should use modern media like mobile phones as interactive media to help the students learn listening. The results of their study indicated that “using mobile as interactive media improved students’ listening skills. Students mentioned that using interactive media was very funny and enjoyable”. They used interactive textbooks, games, and videos. They clarified and showed the positive effect of using interactive media on developing listening skills. They recommended that English teachers have to use and search for interactive tools to develop and improve listening skills.

Instructional design of interactive video

The interactive video designed according to a model; the current research used ADDIE model to design the interactive video;

ADDIE is one of the first Design Models that most designers still use ADDIE as a process for creating E-learning courses. "ADDIE is not dead and we are not leaving it," said Jared Garret. 

ADDIE stands for Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. Each phase of the model offers an opportunity for iterations and changes before moving to the next one. Here is a brief description of each:

Steps of the ADDIE process

Interactive video was designed according to the ADDIE Model (General Model) steps which between the characteristics of all models, it follows these steps, figure (2) shows these steps:

1. Analyzing the content to determine the skills target development.
2. Designing the interactive video by using Story line program.
3. Developing the interactive video.
4. Implementing the interactive video.
5. Evaluating the interactive video.

Step 1 Analysis

             In the analysis step, instructional problem is clarified, the instructional goals and objectives are established, and the learning environment, knowledge, and skills are identified.

Step 2 Design

            The design step deals with learning objectives, assessment instruments, exercises, content, subject matter analysis, lesson planning and media selection. The design phase should be systematic and specific. Systematic means a logical, orderly method of identifying, developing and evaluating a set of planned strategies targeted for attaining the project’s goals; whereas, specific means each element of the instructional design plan needs to be executed with attention to details.

Step 3 Development

The development step is where the developers create and assemble the content assets that were created in the design step. Programmers work to develop and/or integrate technologies. Testers perform debugging procedures. The project is reviewed and revised according to any feedback given.

Step 4 Implementation

During the implementation step, a procedure for training the facilitators and the learners is developed. The facilitators’ training should cover the course curriculum, learning outcomes, method of delivery, and testing procedures. Preparation of the learners include training them on new tools (software or hardware), learner registration.

This is also the step where the project manager ensures that the books, hands on equipment, tools, CD-ROMs and software are in place, and that the learning application or Web site is functional.

Step 5 Evaluation

The evaluation step consists of two parts: formative and summative; formative evaluation is present in each stage of the ADDIE process, and summative evaluation consists of tests designed for domain specific criterion-related referenced items and providing opportunities for feedback from the users.

In conclusion, this research built the interactive video on the ADDIE Model (General Model) which mixes the characteristics of all models, it follows these steps:

1          Analyzing the content to determine the skills target development.

2          Designing the interactive video by using Story line program.

3          Developing the interactive video.

4          Implementing the interactive video.

5          Evaluating the interactive video.

3- Research Method:

The research method includes design, participants and instruments of the research.

Design of the research

The current research adopted the quasi-experimental design with two study groups. Used pre-posttest design to investigate the effect of using the interactive video on developing listening skills.

Participants

Eighty pupils participated in this study and they were divided equally into two groups; an experimental group and a control group. The participants were selected from the first semester of the academic year 2019-2020. The age of those pupils ranged from 9 to 10 years old. They studied English as a subject.

Pilot group of the study:

A group of 40 pupils fourth-grade, that studied English as a foreign language, at Alwafaa primary school, Sohag Governorate, participated in the current research.

Table 1

T-test results of listening skills comparing both experimental and control groups

Table (1) shows, there are no statistically significant differences between the mean scores of students in the control and the experimental group in the pre-listening test.

Instruments

The present research used the following instruments:

1. Listening skills checklist.

2. pre-post listening test.

The listening skills checklist

The objectives of this checklist was to determine the listening skills suitable for elementary stage pupils. The initial checklist was designed and submitted to a jury member to judge its validity. Taking their suggestions into consideration, the final checklist was written by modifying some skills and arranging them. Hence the final checklist included; listening to predict the content, listening to identify the speaker, listening for details, listening to short story to infer the meaning of new words and reach to the moral value, identify short and long vowels.

The pre-post listening test

Based on the listening skills checklist and related studies to listening testing, the researcher designed the listening pre-posttest. The test was designed to investigate the effect of using interactive video in developing elementary stage pupils’ listening skills specially, the test measured fourth-graders’ ability in practicing some listening. The test was 6 questions.

Validity of the test

To ensure the validity, the test has been presented to jury members who judged the validity of the test based on:

-          The linguistic statements of the questions.

-          The suitability of the questions to the pupils age and level.

-          The suitability of the questions for the skills and the content.

Based on the jury’s directions, some changes were made.

Reliability of the test

To be sure the reliability of the test, the following statistical methods were used: Alpha Cronbach Method; the test stability coefficient was 0.889, which is a high value that indicates the stability of the test.

4- Results and discussions

The results of the research are presented with the regard of the research question using an SPSS program. Then, the findings are discussed and interpreted in light of other previous studies conducted in the same field to compare and support the results obtained.

Research question: what is the effect of using interactive video on developing some listening skills for elementary stage pupils?

To answer this question, the t-test for independent samples was used to compare the mean scores of the two groups on the listening post-test. Table 2

t-test results of the listening post-test comparing both experimental and control groups

As shown above in table 2, the estimated t value (26.97) for the test as whole. This indicates that there are statically significant differences between the mean scores of pupils of the control and the experimental group in the post-application of the dimensions of the listening test, at (0.01) level, in favor of the experimental group.

This result coincided with previous studies such as Al-Malkey (2015) who found a positive effect of interactive video on developing listening skills; the study clarified that there were statistically significant differences between the control group and the experimental group in the post-application at the level of 0.01, in favor of pupils who studied using interactive video.

5- Conclusion

• Based on the results of the current research, the following conclusions were reached:
•  It is stated that using interactive video developed pupils’ performance in listening skills (listening to predict the content, listening to identify the speaker, listening for details, listening to short story to infer the meaning of new words and reach to the moral value, identify short and long vowels).
•  It is stated that the study showed the importance of self-learning strategies in teaching English.
•  It is stated that teaching listening using technology enhanced pupils’ motivation for listening.
•  Combining two kinds of assessment: formative assessment in the interactive video questions and feedback, and summative assessment in the form of a final listening test, that lead to better results. The immediate feedback gives pupils the chance to see their progress and motivate them.

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