European Journal of Education Studies

ISSN: 2501 - 1111

ISSN-L: 2501 - 1111
Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu

doi: 10.5281/zenodo.495750 Volume 3 │ Issue 5 │ 2017

USING ONLINE VIDEOS TO IMPROVE

SPEAKING ABILITIES OF EFL LEARNERSi

Ceyhun Yükselir1,
Şevki Kömür2
Faculty of Arts and Sciences,
1

Department of English Language and Literature,

Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, Turkey
2Faculty of Education,

Department of English Language Teaching,

Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, Turkey

Abstract:
There is a growing tendency among the researchers about how to assess and improve
the ability of speaking. In spite of its complex nature, speaking is generally considered
to be the most essential skill to acquire. With the onset of communicative language
teaching, this inclination has encouraged researchers to carry out research and make
recommendations and implications. This study aims to improve the speaking abilities
of EFL students at prep school by using online videos at Osmaniye Korkut Ata
University. The study was carried out with 20 low level students in 5 classes in an
English Language prep class at Osmaniye Korkut Ata University in Turkey. Of 20
students ten were chosen for the treatment group. These students were selected in
accordance with the results of the first speaking exam administered in the 2015-2016
academic year. The materials used were five videos available online. The researchers
asked the students to watch five videos respectively within the period of five weeks.
These online videos were taken from YouTube, BBC, VOA and TED. The data were
analyzed by using t-test in terms of the results of second speaking exam and gender.
Results show that those who watched videos improved their speaking ability and
scored high than those who didn't, and in view of gender, the girls were more
successful than the boys. Thus, it can be concluded that using online videos in classes
can be of vital importance and effective in improving EFL learners’ speaking ability.

Keywords: speaking abilities, productive language skills, online videos, EFL learners

iThis study was presented as a proposal in the 9th ELT Research Conference, 12-14 May 2016, Çanakkale,
Turkey. This is the extended and final version of the study.
Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.
© 2015 – 2017 Open Access Publishing Group 255
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USING ONLINE VIDEOS TO IMPROVE SPEAKING ABILITIES OF EFL LEARNERS

1. Introduction

The issue of how to assess and improve speaking skill has been a growing research
interest among researchers. This is due to the fact that nowadays, speaking skill is a
milestone in English Language Teaching (ELT) since many people want to acquire it for
various purposes primarily for communication purposes. Taking into consideration the
increasing level of globalization and technology, distances have been shortened and
communication among different cultures has become essential. As a result, interaction
with a major language, which is English in this case, has become a must. With the
proliferation of communicative language learning, technology-based adaptations have
become widespread. Since the digital millennia, learner needs and strategy uses have
undergone a significant change. These digital learners have an urge to become more
and more autonomous as time passes. In this age, they can easily be online and get the
information which may be seen impossible once.
With the increase of communicative language teaching theories all over the
world, the use of online videos, technology-based materials have drawn researchers’
and scholars’ interest especially in the last decade. By keeping these leading changes
and advances in mind, it is not surprising that there has been a great tendency towards
the use of technology and its integration into the curriculum in recent years. Using
video is one of the most valued tools in language teaching and learning among them.
The increasing emphasis on communicative techniques and the use of video as an
audio-visual material in foreign language teaching classrooms have gained attention in
an academic environment, and it is clear that the use of video is a great helper and
facilitator for foreign language teachers in learning the target language. Thus, the
impetus of this study lies especially in the studies related to communicative language
teaching theories about speaking ability in language teaching.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Speaking Assessment

One of the goals of language teaching is to enable learners to communicate, so speaking
ability within the scope of productive skills comes to the fore in this sense. Learners can
experience and practice many instances of communication in language teaching. As it is
known, Halliday’s systemic functional theory suggests that speaking is a perceived
need to communicate something to someone.
The significance of assessment cannot be undervalued in language learning
process. In teaching and learning environment, it can be claimed that speaking ability
can improve language learning process, provide new opportunities for four skills and
supports the personal traits of the learners. When learners realize the importance of
their effort to this process, outcomes can be more affective and visible even in assessing

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such a challenging productive skill. Canagarajah (2006) claimed that to be influential

while assessing learners, teachers need to change our emphases from language as a
system to language as social practice, from grammar to pragmatics, from competence to
performance. He also stated that defining language use as performative involves
placing an emphasis on the second construct in each pair and considering how
language diversity is actively negotiated in acts of communication under changing
contextual conditions. In this context, the need of interactive and collaborative formats
for assessing and testing learners’ proficiencies in contextual situations has emerged in
an educational environment.
In today’s language teaching environment, a realistic assessment of one’s ability
to communicate in English involves a wide range of proficiencies. These proficiencies
can be dealt with many kinds of tests. These tests involve multiple tasks: an extended
monologue by the candidate, a dialogue with the other paired candidate, a dialogue
with a rater, and a conversation that involves all three. This arrangement enables the
teachers to assess the learners’ ability to perform in different language skills. A student
who can deliver prepared monologues on a given subject may not necessarily be adept
in conversational skills or other genres of talk.
These multitasks provide many positive characteristics as Norton (2005) argued
that the pairing of the candidates can elicit different language data and different levels
of performance. There are interpersonal dynamics between two paired candidates that
can have implications for their performance. On the scope of these different
implementations to the process of assessment productive skills, it is clear that we need
to develop instruments with imagination and creativity to assess proficiency in the
complex communicative needs of English learners today. According to Brown &
Hudson (1998), these instruments as alternative assessment may require those
characteristics below:
 Requiring students to perform, create, produce or do something;
 Using real-world contexts or situations;
 Allowing students to be assessed on what they normally do in class every day;
 Using tasks that represent meaningful instructional activities;
 Focusing on processes as well as products;
 Taping into higher level thinking and problem-solving skills;
 Providing information about both the strengths and weaknesses of students;
 Ensuring that people, not the machines, do the scoring, using human judgment;
 Encouraging open disclosure of standards and rating criteria;
 Calling upon teachers to perform new instructional and assessment roles (p. 654).
Taking into these features of alternative assessment means that learners’
speaking ability can be evaluated through the process of learning which can bring new

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perspectives into how teachers look through this process. These processes of assessment
may broaden and open new horizons into this field of teaching.

2.2. Online Videos in ELT

Using online videos to convey message in an audio-visual environment is of vital
importance. Asensio & Young (2002) states that the moving image has been used quite a
long time for educational purposes, starting from the magic lanterns over a century ago
to the latest web streaming technologies. With the opportunities which World Wide
Web brings into today’s teaching and learning environment, students now have a
chance to access the most current material and latest examples, whether to supplement
classroom discussion or to highlight new developments in the field. Sherer & Shea
(2011) show that many Web-based channels where people with similar interests (e.g.,
comparative management) have been developed to create repositories of relevant
materials. In this way, a number of instructors and students in the given field share this
responsibility a lot.
Cakir (2006) reveals that by illustrating relationships in a way that is not possible
with words, videos make meaning coherent and more comprehensible. Two minutes of
video can enable students an hour of classroom work, or it can be used to introduce a
wide range of activities for five minutes. He also states that a ten-minute programme
can be useful for more advanced students, so less advanced students may wish
something much shorter because their limited commands of the language also lessens
their attention span.
Boyle (1997) states that digital and online videos are often embedded in a
multimedia or hypermedia environment, and some educators prefer talking about
multimedia or hypermedia learning. Likewise, Wagener (2006) showed that short on-
line video clips can provide a uniquely rich resource for the digital language laboratory
which when incorporated into a structured self-access programme offer a sound model
for intensive language work. Her study emphasizes that the benefits of encouraging
regular independent listening practice via short video clips can be quite considerable
and that these benefits are also widely perceived amongst the students themselves.
On the other hand, in their intercontinental project Jauregi & Bañados (2008)
have found that using interactive computer videoconferencing tools bring people
together for academic purposes. The use of video-web technology enabled teachers and
learners to create an attractive virtual environment for learning a language
collaboratively, together with features of its culture. Students liked it and this
contributed to increasing their motivation to communicate and learn the language, the
culture and pragmatic issues in a real sociocultural context. Audio-graphic conferencing
offers more than that by including a whole range of tools for graphics (pictures,
drawing), writing, audio and possibly video. It allows us to move away from the
emphasis on writing, thereby encompassing the visual and the acoustic as well. Kress &

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van Leeuwen (2001, p. 92) states that “The new technologies’ emphasis on multimodality,
three dimensionality and interactivity can be seen as a return of many of the things that were
lost in the transition from ‘orality’ to ‘literacy’”.
Jensen et al. (2011) revealed that as a way of including videos to language
learning process, video projects provide several opportunities for learners by creating
more dynamic and interactive classrooms together with promoting positive confidence
and individual dependence. In addition, these projects foster learner autonomy and
enable learners to practice the target language in a collaborative, enjoyable, and
motivating atmosphere. Nikitina (2009) stated that the convergence of technology and
pedagogy has a great potential in making teaching and learning experiences rich,
memorable, motivating and enjoyable for both the learners and their teachers.

2.3 Research Questions

This study was concerned with the productive skills of the prep-class learners within
the context of speaking ability. In this sense, prep-class students’ speaking ability was
evaluated by means of using online videos. Each participant watched online videos
except for the class hours and they were observed whether videos can affect the
speaking abilities of the students positively. In brief, the study seeks answers to the
following research questions below:
1. How do online videos affect the speaking abilities of EFL learners?
2. Is there any difference in speaking performances of male and female students
who watched online videos?

3. Methodology

3.1 Participants
The study was conducted at Osmaniye Korkut Ata University, School of Foreign
Languages in the first term of academic year 2015-2016. 20 low level students were
chosen for the study and all participants were English prep-class students who were
from the faculty of engineering and economics and administrative sciences. It should be
noted that students in the sample group were voluntarily agreed to participate in the
study. Out of these 20 students, 10 of them were chosen for the treatment group. They
were asked to watch five online videos in five weeks period respectively. Half of the
participants were male and half of them were female. After they watched videos, they
were required to complete the exercises about the videos.

3.2 Data Collection

Five online videos in five weeks period were applied to the participants by the
researchers except for the class hours. The participants were required to watch videos
taken from YouTube, BBC, VOA and TED with subtitles or texts. It should be stated

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that these online videos were chosen by the researchers themselves before the
treatment. After the students watched the videos, the researchers encouraged them by
using the supplementary materials such as worksheets regarding the films. In addition,
they do not have enough motivation to be successful in speaking. These students were
chosen in accordance with the first speaking exam results and they were all low level
students in terms of speaking. The speaking exam questions were prepared by the
testing office of the School of Foreign Languages, Osmaniye Korkut Ata University. It
should also be noted that the aim of the speaking exam applied by School of Foreign
Languages is to observe the capacity of EFL learners in speaking, in this sense, the
students are asked to answer the questions chosen from the box by the students
themselves and so there is almost no difference between the first and second speaking
exam questions. In order to exemplify the speaking exam process, some questions
below are directed:
1. Do you agree or disagree? Why? Give examples.
- You shouldn’t believe what you read on the internet.
- Everybody in the world should have a computer.
- Technology made the world a better place.
- Answer the question: “If you were a millionaire, what would you do?”
2. You are the manager of a hospital in Osmaniye. You have to choose a new nurse.
Look at the three people below. Talk about each person. Finally, tell us who you
have chosen and why?

3. “My name’s Alexis and I’m “I’m Mehmet and I’m 40

“I’m Merve. I can speak two
4. from Barcelona. My Turkish is years old. I have 20 years of
languages, English and Turkish. I’m
still studying at Çukurova University
quite good but I can also speak experience and I love
5. English and Spanish. So, I can
but I’m a very successfull student. I’m working. I’m very clever, fit
6. polite and friendly and I love
very help foreign patients, too. I and healthy. I work hard and
helping
7. people.” have 3 years of experience at a I’m good at my job.”
children’s hospital.”

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1. The idea map shows which countries prefer which colors in restaurants. Talk about
the effects of colors in some countries. What do they mean?

Mexico China

- Red (fire, hapinness,

Effects of colours good things in life)
in Restaurants
Orange (hunger)

England -white (fresh, clean)

- Wood colours (natural)

Figure 1: Idea Map

At the beginning of the first online video, they had difficulty in understanding even
following the sentences properly, however, this case changed after a period of time.
Subsequent to 5 weeks period, they took the second speaking exam towards the end of
the term and the difference between the first and second speaking exam results were
analyzed by using t-test and regression analysis. The following part deals with data
analysis and findings.

4. Data Analysis and Findings

This study was administered to the participants at the first term of 2015-2016 academic
year. In order to analyze data, t-test and regression analysis, which is related to the
students’ speaking exam grades, were carried out. The regression analysis was
performed to identify the students’ grades. The data collected were analyzed using the
SPSS 18 software.

4.1 T-test Results

Table 1: The t-test speaking exam results of the EFL students regarding groups and
gender factor
Gender and Groups N Average Standard deviation t Significance
Female 5 14 1,224
6,765 0,000
Male 5 7,8 1,643
Experimental Group 10 10,9 3,541
-5,064 0,000
Control Group 10 4,6 1,713

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In Table 1, the gender factor of the EFL students and those watching online videos who
were in the experimental group and control group are shown. The difference between
the grade point average according to the gender factor of those who were in the
treatment, is determined to be meaningful in respect of a statistical viewpoint (p<0,01),
so this is statistically significant. In other words, the average grade point of the female
students in the experimental group in comparison to male students is higher and it
could also be said that they give more importance to speaking skill.

4.2 The Results of the Regression Analysis

Table 2: The regression analysis results which affect the gender and
experimental group’s speaking exam results
Model R R2 Corrected R2 The standard mistake of the estimation
dimension0 1 ,854 a ,730 ,698 2,31682
a. Estimators: (Standard), GMD

In Table 2, the regression results based on the students’ speaking exam grades is given.
The R2 value is identified as 0,73 and according to this, it could be said that 73% of the
students’ grades can be explained in relation to the students’ gender and watching
online videos factors.

Model Sum of Squares Degree of Freedom Average Square F Sig.

Regression 246,500 2 123,250 22,962 ,000a
1 Difference 91,250 17 5,368
Total 337,750 19
a. Estimators: (Standard), GMD
b. Dependent Variable: YSNO

As can be seen in the table above, it could be said that the model being established is
meaningful (F=22,962; 0,000<0,01) and significant, thus it can be claimed that gender
and the watching online videos by the participants affect the speaking results. It should
be noted that by using online videos, EFL learners can improve their level of speaking
skill.

Unstandardized Value Standardized Value

Model t Sig.
B Std. Error Beta
(Constant) 6,150 ,897 6,854 ,000
1
Group 6,300 1,036 ,767 6,080 ,000
Gender -3,100 1,036 -,377 -2,992 ,008
a. Dependent Variable: YSNO

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In the table above, the information based on the regression values of the gender
and experimental group’s speaking exam grades and the significance level of these
values is given. It is identified that the experimental group factor (
and the gender factor ( is effective on the students’
speaking exam grades.

5. Conclusion

It is not surprising that video is one of the best and important materials that enable
students to practice what they have learned through various techniques and to promote
language learning that is all four skills. Canning-Wilson (2000) defines video, as “a form
of communication and it can be achieved without the help of language, since we often interact by
gesture, eye contact and facial expression to convey meaning”.
Thus, it is a fact that a wide range of materials enable learners to complete
communicative situations by means of the instant, immediate and reachable
combination of audio-visual tools. Thus, these learners can have the chance to
contextualize the language they have learned. In other words, they can see and hear the
speakers’ utterances in dialogues such as their ages, their gender, perhaps their
relationship to each other, their way of social life and status, what they are doing and
even their feelings and emotions.
In conclusion, knowing a language means clearly performing productive skills
effectively. Speaking is one of the most significant skills which learners need to
improve. In this sense, this study shows that using online videos in language classes
enables student to communicate and interact more appropriately and they can achieve
the ability to convey their messages much more easily.
Taking the speaking results into consideration, the students in the experimental
group improved their level of speaking via online videos and female students scored
higher than male students. So, it can be said that female students are more successful
than males in the speaking ability. As online videos become more accessible to the EFL
learners it is likely that they will become more familiar to videos and communication
tools and they will have more tendencies to use authentic language.

6. Limitations and Recommendations for Further Research

This research was conducted with 20 EFL learners who are studying in the prep-class.
Hence, similar studies can be carried out with the high number of students from
different kinds of English level in order to have larger perspective about this subject.
Moreover, the scope of the study was limited to the experimental and post test results
and the data included five online videos in five weeks period. Further research focusing
on the speaking that could affect the EFL learners’ speaking ability can be researched by

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focusing on other assessment tools in terms of speaking. It is relatively evident that

much more research is needed to determine the other factors affecting the speaking
ability in the context of EFL courses.

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