MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

PHUONG DONG UNIVERSITY

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

FINAL ASSIGNMENT

PERSONAL REFLECTION ON THE ARTICLE:

“Effect of Using Video Materials in the Teaching of

Listening Skills for University Students”

Supervisor: Vu Thi Thanh Yen M.A

Student: Nguyen Hoang Anh
Student number: 519701006
Class: 519701A1

Hanoi, December 2022

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First of all, I would like to express my endless thanks and gratefulness

to my supervisor Ms. Vu Thi Thanh Yen who was always beside me to
devotedly support, guide, and motivate me throughout the studying
period with her patience, enthusiasm, immense knowledge and useful
suggestions to accomplish my wonderful assignment.

I also acknowledge my thankfulness to all of the teachers in the

English Language Department at Phuong Dong University who have
directly and indirectly guided me in writing this assignment. I would
like to state my thanks for their valuable guidance, encouragement and
instructions.

At last, my deep thanks come to my friends at 519701A1 who gave me

a lot of useful comments and suggestions as well as inspiration so that I
can improve the quality of this assignment perfectly. And I wish to
greatly thank my parents for their support and encouragement
throughout my study.

Nguyen Hoang Anh

OUTLINE

PART I: INTRODUCTION...........................................................................4
PART II: DEVELOPMENT..........................................................................4
2.1. Summary..............................................................................................4

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 2.2 Strengths & Weaknesses.......................................................................7
2.2.1 Strength...........................................................................................7
2.2.2 Weaknesses.....................................................................................7
2.3 Applicability of the use of video in teaching listening skills to
university students......................................................................................8
PART III: CONCLUSION.............................................................................8

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PART I: INTRODUCTION 
   Today, along with the trend of globalization, English as an international
means of communication plays a vital role in every aspect of social life. For
example, more than half of the websites and learning materials from the
Internet or reputable universities are in English. As long as linguistic ability
is in one's possession, one will have the key to access this limitless source
of information. Therefore, this is a significant advantage in demonstrating
the crucial value of studying English. According to the British Council,
listening skill, among four skills, plays an essential role in daily life; it takes
up half of a conversation which is equally important as speaking skill.
However, acquiring or mastering listening comprehension is not easy. As a
result, many schools have emphasized teaching listening skill; besides
textbooks, video is a practical educational resource. Many studies on this
issue have been conducted, including that I was genuinely impressed with
“Effect of Using Video Materials in the Teaching of Listening Skills for
University Students” by Kretsai Woottipong. The article is informative and
helpful for both native and non-native speakers, it shows every aspect of the
use of video in teaching listening comprehension. This critical review
summarizes the essential ideas, strengths, and limitations, helping people
have a clearer perspective and a sense of direction in learning English
listening by video.

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

2.1. Summary
   The article is about the benefits of utilizing video materials to teach
listening comprehension to university students since listening is a skill that
plays an essential role in learning the language; however, it is not focused

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on by the school which teaches English because it is a natural process of
acquiring a new language. For this reason, using a valuable tool like video
in teaching listening skills can help students' listening comprehension and
also provide teachers with a range of resources to use in EFL classes due to
its multiplying input modalities that can encourage students and draw their
focus to the audio input. 

Furthermore, in terms of language processing, effective listening demands

an understanding of these models of the Listening Process. Firstly, students
need to employ both bottom-up and top-down processing methods. While
bottom-up processing strategies emphasize the individual components of
spoken messages, top-down processing strategies emphasize the macro
features of text, such as the speaker's purpose and the topic of the message.
Secondly, authentic material is an effective tool that can come in all forms
of communication. The advantages of using authentic materials for
language learning and instruction are that they show students how to speak
in everyday situations and encourage readers to focus on meaning rather
than just form or structure, motivating multilingualism and fostering
language acquisition.

Specifically, video can be helpful for language acquisition because it can

illustrate real-world scenarios and be entertaining. However, the selection
of topics must consider the students' interests, their level of English ability,
and cultural considerations. Students are more motivated to cooperate with
the teacher when offered the option to study using video materials. In most
of the research, integrating visual and auditory input has led to more recall
than visual-only or audio-only presentations.

To illustrate this idea, an experiment is given to the students learning

English to assess their attitudes toward utilizing video resources to teach
listening skills and their listening abilities using video materials. One

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hundred eighteen first-year English majors from Thaksin University were
the study's participants in the second semester of 2012. A total of 20 class
sessions, along with lesson plans, English comprehension tests, and a
survey of the student's attitudes, were the tools employed in this study.
There are 35 second-year students to check the difficulty level of English
comprehension tests. Besides, the questionnaire quality was evaluated and
enhanced to make it more thorough, dependable, and valid for data
collection. Through quantitative analysis, which was based on the
information from the pretest, the posttest, and the questionnaire, the data
from this technique of teaching in the research were evaluated and
analyzed. Students' listening comprehension skills improved after seeing the
videos, as evidenced by the achievement of the students' posttest being
higher than the pretest at a considerable level. Students' attitudes about
developing listening skills through video range from average to excellent;
thereby, the use of the video to teach listening skills was well received by
the students.

Video is frequently seen as more effective and understandable for students

learning a second or foreign language than textbooks. Nevertheless,
authentic video material needs to be carefully chosen to ensure the
difficulty level is appropriate; thus, teachers should be well-trained in using
video and how best to exploit its inherent advantages in a learning
environment. Videos containing complex vocabulary or ungrammatical or
incomplete structures should not be used.  

Students' speaking and listening abilities can be improved through video-

based education. It aids in developing listening abilities, acquiring new
vocabulary words, and developing independent learning. Research should
be conducted on additional factors, such as how watching videos might
enhance speaking

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2.2 Strengths & Weaknesses
2.2.1 Strength
   To begin with, the study results show that the comments on the teaching
methods are positive in knowledge and transmission, and the results table
shows that they also create interest in students. From this, the study
addressed the surveyed students' needs.

Next, the study layout and approach are logical and easy to understand. The
"Abstract" section summarizes the idea of teaching listening skills through
video by presenting the principal content clearly and bringing readers to the
experiment to help the reader approach the method. The writer also makes
the research parts clear enough to understand. For the study,  specialists
check the questions and the tests for accuracy, as the data and comments
from the students participating in the experiment, which contribute to
making the study results more reliable.

For the "Discussion" section, it helps teachers have a clearer view of the
method of teaching listening by video.

2.2.2 Weaknesses 
However, there is a major drawback in the article. The use of videos in
teaching listening is proven to be undoubtedly appropriate for university
students since the sound and images from the video can help students to
distinguish the accent between countries. However,  the recommendation of
using video to improve speaking skills is unsuitable since it may include
mixed-up accents. For example, even though the US and UK both speak
English, their accent is different from each other. Consequently, students
may get confused.

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2.3 Applicability of the use of video in teaching listening skills to university
students.
Using videos in teaching English listening to university students is
advisable. Video can present “slices of life” which include samples of real-
life situations. At their best, video presentations will stimulate language
learners' genuine interest. Learners may utilize video to examine how
language usage varies with age and how the link between language use and
paralinguistic aspects can be targeted, including how to portray emotions
and feelings. 

Furthermore, the application of video materials to teaching listening skills

allows students to get familiar with the accent of native speakers through
real-life conversations, from which, students will gradually be able to get
used to the pronunciation and to distinguish the accents among different
countries. Video offers communication in a more contextualized form since
videos provide facial expressions along with the context of the situation,
thus students can distinguish similar sentences with diverse meanings. That
makes video a useful supplement to language acquisition. If teachers work
with dialogue in textbooks or audio cassettes, as usual, the conversation will
be much harder for students to understand clearly. 

PART III: CONCLUSION

This reflection has provided an insight into the article “Effect of Using
Video Materials in the Teaching of Listening Skills for University
Students” by Kretsai Woottipong, published on August 22, 2014.  The
review begins with an introduction about the importance of English as an
international means of communication and listening skill, which plays an
essential role in daily life among all skills.

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Thus, students' listening comprehension can be improved by employing
video in the classroom, which also gives teachers a variety of materials to
work with their students. Nevertheless, videos with difficult vocabulary or
grammatical or incomplete structures should be avoided as great
consideration must be given to the selection of video content.

Then, the reflection illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of the teaching
method. Several major strengths are shown, such as the logical and easy-to-
understand study layout; thereby, it helps teachers have a clearer view of
the method of teaching listening by video. The only possible flaw from my
perspective is that using video to hone speaking abilities is not
recommended since it might confuse students' accents and comprehension.

The review finished with a short discussion about the applicability of using
videos in teaching listening skills to university students. The use of video
materials allows students to explore how language usage changes with age
and how the relationship between language use and paralinguistic features
may be focused in real-life situations. As a result, the study can be reference
information for other universities to enhance their teaching listening skill
strategies to meet the demand of study programs. This will lessen the
difficulties in learning listening comprehension for students and improve
teaching effectiveness