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Nowadays, listening is considered one of the most important aspect in language teaching since it is believed to facilitate the other language skills, such as speaking, reading and writing.

Listening is the ability to understand and comprehend auditory stimuli. Also, according to Saricoban (1999, he says that listening includes the understanding of speaker’s accent or pronunciation, their grammar and vocabulary and the meaning conveyed.

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Nowadays, and also with the advance of technology most of the listening input can be found in the way of visuals, that is TV, videos on the internet, and even the face to face conversations have visual support. In fact, according to Baltova (1994) as cited in Astudillo (2013) in a real-life listening situations when people are exposed to oral input, the receptor not only listens to the message but it also views it. Therefore, based on this quote, we can infer that the role of visuals is extremely important so as to have a wider view at the moment of listening, and also because is more related to real life context. Actually, Mevada & Shah (2015) state that listening is a multitasking process that involves not only auditory aspect but also visual and attention processors.

There is not an agreement upon the benefits or disadvantages of using visual support, especifically videotexts, to develop listening comprehension ability. However, some studies mentioned in Astudillo’s thesis (2013) such as Baltova (1994), Perry and Meredith (1984), Shin (1998), Sueyoshi and Hardison (2005), and Brett (1997) come up with the conclusion that there is an improvement in the listening performance when using videos.

Some of the benefits mentioned in those studies are:

Visual information makes the situations and interaction more realistic, so the learners not only listen but also view the participants and the setting.

Also, listeners may get more information by noticing non-verbal cues such as body language, facial expressions and gestures of the speakers

Additionally, listeners are able to recognize the role of the speaker and the context.

The listener can be stimulated to activate background knowledge using visual images

Conversely, other researchers such as Bejat et al (2000) and Mac William (1986), both mentioned in Astudillo’s thesis (2013: 9), fell sceptical about the use of videos since, although they admit their benefits, they also point out the potential distractions that visuals can cause in the learner because the learner may focus on the visual component more than the aural input.

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According to Ginther 2002, there are two types of visual. The first one being context visuals, which as the name suggest they provide information about the context and whatever other things that are available in it such as participants, objects and the whole setting.
For example, in the video thanks to the visual support you can, as a teacher, ask different types of questions that need the context to answer it. For instance, why would you think that he is telling that story to the woman? Thanks to the visual context you can infer that may be it is a date, but also you need to understand the meaning of what he is saying.

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Admission: Single Dad, Doing Good 2013 Movie Scene

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On the other hand, we have content visual.  They are related to the content of the verbal interaction and include pictures, drawings and diagrams. For instance, in a speech someone is talking about the benefit that the sport has in our bodies and there is an image at the back of the talker, then the image will help the audience to understand better.

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Bejar, et al., (2000) as cited in Astudillo (2013), introduces four types of content visuals that affect comprehension differently: content visuals that replicate the audio stimulus, content visuals that illustrate the audio stimulus, content visuals that organize information in the audio stimulus and content visuals that supplement the audio stimulus. Bejar, et al., (2000), states that the last type of content visuals not only does not facilitate comprehension but also makes it harder.

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VISUALS THAT REPLICATE THE AUDIO STIMULI

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VISUALS THAT REPLICATE THE AUDIO STIMULI

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The video replicates the audio with words and images

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Just 14% of Global Plastic Packaging is Recycled | A Circular Economy for Plastics

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Based on the results of the Simce 2012, a standardized test to measure reading and listening skills of 11th grade students (3º medio), it is possible to realize that changes in second language teaching have to be made.

This test classifies the learning results into three levels: A1 (which is the lowest), A2 and B1. The students who are part of the last two levels are able to obtain a certificate.

During that year, 18% of the 186,000 students who were evaluated obtained a certificate, which means that 82% of the students can’t communicate in English, therefore, they do not accomplish the expectations of the national curriculum. By the time students are in this grade, they should have a A2 - B1 level.

According to the Bases curriculares (2012: 139) provided by the Ministry of Education, the mandatory minimum content that students should have in listening is: “to demonstrate comprehension of main ideas and explicit information in simple oral texts of varying length, and authentic interactions such as interviews,videos and speeches”.

In theory, this means that all teachers should use different listening materials to help learners to develop the aural skill. However, by only providing audio materials  for teachers to use in the classroom, learners do not develop listening skills that can be transferred to other learning situations.

For the purpose of our presentation, we will focus on the use of videos as a mean to accomplish the mandatory minimum content. According to Astudillo (2013) “Despite the advantages of using videos in listening comprehension, many language instructors and students still do not fully experience the benefits of videos as a mean to build up students’ listening skills”. She also mentions that in public and semi-private schools in Chile, for instance, the Ministry of Education provides teachers with listening materials mostly in the form of soundtracks.

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VISUALS THAT ILLUSTRATE THE AUDIO STIMULI

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VISUALS THAT ILLUSTRATE THE AUDIO STIMULI

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World Tourism - Video for Listening Comprehension

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The script of this video can be found here: http://teachinglearningenglishmedia.blogspot.com/2013/02/world-tourism-video-for-listening.html Video for listening comprehension in English classroom, taken from Tell me More British English Advanced level, published by Auralog, France

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History, its often said, is written by the victors so how accurate is our understanding of history? Six distinguished University of Minnesota professors from fields ranging from African Studies to surgery, come together to examine current perspectives in U.S. history. What was America like after the Civil War?

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VISUALS THAT SUPPLEMENT THE AUDIO STIMULI

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VISUALS THAT SUPPLEMENT THE AUDIO STIMULI

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***Not so beneficial for listening comprehension