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.

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:

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. 

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.