An Overview of Using Video Listening Assessment in ESL Classroom

Sharon Chien 0031801 Jan. 9, 2011

I. Summary:

Introduction This final report will cover the influence of using video media in listening assessment, such as the role of video media, practical aspects of using video, the effect of the use of video text, and finally the opinions of test takers. Those researches show the pros and cons of using video listening assessment in ESL classroom and how teachers apply the findings and theories in teaching in listening assessment.

Pros and cons The use of video media in teaching listening comprehension has become extremely sophisticated and widespread. In the field of teaching English as a second language or other language, many researchers (Progosh (1996), Baltova (1994), Dunkel (1991),

Arthur (1999), Wagner (2002)) suggested that instructors can use audio-visual aids to help students visualize words as well as meaning and to train students in ESP related scenarios. Also, students can increase something other than listening, such as the awareness of other cultures, stress patterns, speech rhythm, and speed of speech in various situations. Researchers even noticed when the action or body language was more than utterances, the dialogue is relatively shorter, and students are easier to understand.

Video not only gives students a realistic model to imitate for role-play, but also provides learners see immediate meaning in terms of vocabulary recognition in their L1 (it is called “visual literacy”). That is, videos make the tasks, situation or language more

1 authentic. The most important advantage is that assessing listening comprehension via video media offers a chance to improve learners’ ability to understand comprehensible input. Another benefit of video listening assessment is that the face validity is quite high, it reduces students anxiety of taking test and the format are almost the same as what students do in the classroom. However, everything has two sides. Currently, research over the past two decades, shows that there are several limitations to be recognized.

The first limitation on video studies deals with the long-term effects of using video in the classroom. For example, how can long-run effects of video be measured? How much exposure to video would make a significant difference in the language learning process?

And how does video support the curriculum? Aside from these doubts, researcher would need to ask who decides how many times the video is played? Those unanswered questions yet to be proved with further research if there is sufficient evidence to support continued use of audio-visual aids in the learning of foreign language. Some researchers argued that test-takers were often so busy looking at their test papers and answering questions that they were often not watching the video monitor, the constant visual stimuli may sometimes detract from the attention spans of the aural input. Canning-Wilson

(2000) stated although video may seem to hold student interest, she believed that it could be inferred that student comprehension of the video may be the visual clues instead of the auditory components. For test developers, some of them are not willing to use video listening assessment in L2 classroom, although they know learners can benefit from video listening assessment. Conducting a video listening assessment test is not an easy job. It still requires more resources to develop and administer. Therefore, the practicality of video assessment is the most controversial issue, but we still cannot ignore that there

2 are some advantages of the use video media do help students listening skills.

II. Reflection:

Till now, researchers still cannot find concrete results to declare their stands for

supporting or disapproving the language teachers to apply video listening

assessment in L2 classroom. But I believe that visual aids can increase language

learners' motivation and listening comprehension in some way. Take me for

example, when I was a freshman in college, the teacher of the listening training class

used a special way to teach us. At the beginning of the class, he taught us the

material offered in the textbook. In the second period of the class, he played

American TV series without subtitles. At that time, I did not realize the purpose of

playing video as a listening instruction. But I remembered that I really enjoy

watching the video. I feel relax and comfortable under this kind of visual cues. I also

learned something other than listening ability because the teacher asked us to fill in

the blanks on the printed script/ lines after watching the episode. The teacher would

play the video again with English subtitles to check the answers. Therefore, I can

train my listening ability as well as my lexical skills. Just like the argument have

mentioned above, when I hear the words or phrases that I don't understand, visual

cues did help me a lot on decoding the context. Furthermore, some people are

concerned about the practicality issue, which is the distraction of being busy looking

at the test papers when the video is playing. In my opinion, I think this is not an

obstacle to the test procedure as long as the administers or test developers allow test-

takers to browse the test questions before every section starts. Thus, examinees can

3 find the main ideas or key words from the context in advanced. On the contrary,

execute listening assessment via video media without any instructions might affect

effectiveness. For instance, if one student just watches the video leisurely, he/ she

never listens to what are the actors are talking about in the video or don't pay any

attention to understand the context. It may increase students' learning motivation,

but how about the learning effectiveness? To me, instructors play an important role

in guiding learners to contextualize the listening scripts. Instead of adding visual

stimuli in the traditional listening classes, repetition and analyzing the context from

the video cannot be overemphasized.

III. Application:

Those experimental findings and theories offered me all the possible positive and negative viewpoints on assessing language learners' listening ability through video media.

Thanks to those data and results, I got a lot of inspirations in planning a video listening class from the research. According to different participants (English majors and non-

English majors), there are two ways to guide learners to better improve their listening skills.

Teaching non-English majors First of all, if I am responsible for teaching aural training classes for non- English majors,

I would first share some elementary-level videos to motivate my students, such as playing sesame street videos or American cartoons. Those videos are designed for young children, so they try to use the most basic vocabulary and clearest pronunciation that best suits the beginners. The length of the video clips is always quite short, so students won't

4 get distracted or bored easily. But the most essential lectures still focus on the selected textbooks. I think students need to understand the academic patterns that usually shown on the textbooks. Also, I will teach them how to find testing strategies (i.e. finding key words or looking for specific information) in order to deal with the coming exams. For the second-year non- English majors in a listening class, English learning magazines like

Ivy League Analytical Magazine and Studio Classroom offered DVDs with both aural and visual electric files for subscribers. What's more, the lines in the video are printed in the magazine with translation at the back of the book. Readers can do listening, watching and reading at the same time. CD-ROMS even provided a speaking system that learners can repeat after the recordings. The overall skills can be practice.

Teaching English majors For English majors, I appreciated my college professor's instructions- using TV series or variety shows to teach listening class. For example, friends, dancing with the stars, and

Britain got talented. First, the face validity is higher than traditional multiple choice testing. It enhances learners’ motivation. Also, the variety show always invites some guests from different countries, students can train their ears to discriminate various accents and identify use of stress and pitch (information units and emphasis.) The more they listen, the better their listening skills are.

For intermediate level class, I plan to show them a more advanced clip, such as BBC news video. The videos that BBC provide online is a student-oriented web page, it includes various topics. The most useful part in learning is that the reporters/anchors slow down the speed of the talk and the video usually plays for one minute. In that way, learners can learn higher level vocabulary and cultivate the habit of listening short

5 English news. For higher-intermediate level class, I highly appreciate the learning website- CNN Students News, which offers both video material and transcript online without any charge. CNN network publishes five days a week. Every episode is about ten minutes long. Instead of giving personal bias in the video material, the content tries to provide the facts in the world. Moreover, the websites also include something useful for teachers and students. For example, there are web pages like “story highlight” for learners to first browse the general ideas to predict the plots that will show in the video later; the website provides another useful learning quiz for teachers to recall students’ memories from the video text as well.

To sum up, there is no short cut in operating listening skills, the process of the listening assessment matters. It takes time and efforts for both language teachers and students.

Language instructors should be able to help language learners to handle the target language skills by various aids. On the contrary, language learners should keep learning the strategies of language use.

Further researches From the literatures I have reviewed, clearly further research is needed in this area to expand our understanding of the use of video text in EFL classroom, they are

(a) What is the relationship of vision and hearing in overall comprehension of a

videotext?

(b) How do listeners monitor their own comprehension?

(c) What is the role of cultural and background knowledge in comprehension of

videotexts?

Any of these areas is worthy of more in-depth exploration.

6 IV. Note: 1. Sesame cartoon video http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=LFAE4tx22eA&feature=player_embedded#!

2. BBC news video

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8652837.stm

3. CNN Student News

http://edition.cnn.com/video/

V. References:

1. Gruba, P. (1997). The role of video media in listening assessment. System, 25 (3), 335-

2. Progosh, D. (1996). Using video for listening assessment: opinions of test-takers.

TESL Canada Journal, 14 (1), 34~44.

3. Canning, C. (2000). Practical Aspects of Using Video in the Foreign Language

Classroom. The Internet TESL Journal, 6(11).

4. Wagner, E. (2010). The effect of the use of video texts on ESL listening test-taker

performance. Language Testing, 27(4), 493~513.