A Study on the Effects of English Listening Comprehension on Captioned Videos for College Students Using Auto-captioning Function of YouTube

• Main Author: Anton Subarno
• Other Authors: Wen-Fu Pan
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/wqn4h2

博士 === 國立東華大學 === 教育與潛能開發學系 === 106 === The Internet provides innumerable online resources, allowing users to listen to music, watch movies, and communicate via various platforms online. YouTube is an online service which allows internet users to sign up and upload files or video clips for public viewing. YouTube has also provided closed and machine-generated automatic captions since 2009. Whether YouTube’s captioning function can facilitate English learners’ listening comprehension skills or not is a question worth exploring. Therefore, in this research, the researcher utilized YouTube videos to investigate the effects of captioned video, non-captioned video, and audio-only mode on listening comprehension skills of college students in Indonesia. Specific purpose statements are as follows: (a) to compare the effectiveness of audio-only, non-captioned video, and captioned video modes of input on English listening skills, (b) to assess the improvement or progression of English listening comprehension capability in three input modes: audio-only, non-captioned video, and captioned video. A total of 91 college students in English as a second language courses were enrolled in this research, comprising 40 students who were exposed to audio-only (control group), 26 students who were exposed to non-captioned video (experimental group-1), and 25 students who were exposed to captioned video (experimental group-2). Each group of participants took a listening comprehension pre-test in the first week and were then exposed to a treatment and given questions (in periods lasting around 15 minutes, conducted once a week throughout four weeks, spanning the second week to the fifth week of the research). Finally, students were given a delayed post-test in the ninth week. Each treatment group was exposed to material covering different topics, but the type, level and amount of content was similar. The test instruments were designed and edited by the researcher by referring to the test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) style. All test items (52 in total) were analyzed in a pilot study in which a total of 117 participants were involved during January and February, 2017, using item analysis methods including item difficulty (P), item discrimination (D), and critical ratio (CR). The 34 valid items were then selected for the formal test instruments. During January to April, 2018, the formal experiment was conducted and the data was collected from the pre-test scores (covariate variable), post-test scores (outcome variable), and delayed post-test scores (retention variable). Analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze significance of difference among the audio-only, non-captioned video, and captioned video. Apart from the effect of treatment on the three groups, this research also evaluated the progress of the participants’ English listening comprehension within each group by measuring it every week. The progress of English listening comprehension within each group was analyzed using one-way ANOVA. The following conclusions are presented based on the results: (a) the students of the captioned video group evidenced better effects in terms of English listening comprehension learning compared to those in the non-captioned video group and audio-only group; (b) There was evidence of significant progress across all three groups of students on six tests, including the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest; however, the students of the captioned video group outperformed those in the other two groups; and (c) Exposing learners to online captioned video via YouTube is recommended as a worthwhile pedagogical method to be applied in the English listening comprehension learning context.