Language learning effects of interactive presentations on Basic Intensive English students´ listening comprehension skill at the Foreign Language Department of the University of El Salvador, term I /2018

For many years, verbal communication and printed text have been the main resources teachers have used to transmit knowledge to students. Even though, those resources have shown to produce good results, the XXI century demands from educators the incorporation of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) into the teaching-learning process to be updated with the new trends in education and help students develop their language and digital skills. In the present research another possibility was explored to go beyond verbal interaction and printed text to improve students’ English listening comprehension skill by making use of multimedia resources such as interactive presentations. However, the implementation of these emerging technologies requires from educators to do research in order to identify whether they produce positive or negative effects on students´ learning. Multimedia resources such as interactive presentations can be defined as the presentation of words, audios, videos and pictures that are intended to foster meaningful learning (Mayer and Colvin, 2008). This practice is supported by the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning developed by Mayer and other authors in 2005. The argument is that multimedia, based on eight principles, supports the way the human brain learns since it is assumed that people learn more deeply from words, audio and pictures than from words alone. Moreover, around the world many studies, with good results, have been carried out about this topic but there is still a lot to learn from multimedia resources. In fact, since results can vary from one context to another and from one population to another, it is important to wonder if they could have the same effects with University of El Salvador English language students than with students from other countries and if it is so, to determine the extent of those effects. For that reason the research question for the present study was: What are the language learning effects of interactive presentations on Basic Intensive English students´ listening comprehension skill at the Foreign Language Department of the University of El Salvador, term I/2018? In order to answer the research question, the general objective was: To identify the language learning effects of interactive presentations on Basic English II students´ English listening skill by comparing experimental and control group students’ outcomes related to listening subskills to recognize whether the implementation of these multimedia resources can be recommended in traditional language teaching classes at the Foreign Language Department of the University of El Salvador. About the methodology, this research was based on a quasi-experimental research design since the researcher worked with an experimental and a control group with no random assignment for selecting the sample. Instead, due to time constrains faced by teachers and students from other Basic Intensive English groups to be part of the present research, a convenience sampling method was used for choosing the two groups. The main criteria for selecting experimental and controls groups was that they must share the same characteristics of students from the universe in terms of age, English level, and gender variation combined with their time availability and willingness to participate in the research. The research procedure was the following: after selecting the experimental and control groups, the students took a listening comprehension pre-test at the beginning of the research and a post-test at the end. Then, during the following two weeks after the pre-test, students from the experimental group were exposed to interactive presentations designed by the researcher to improve their listening comprehension skill level. Those interactive presentations were available in a website called “Miues” where students had unlimited access to the resources and received feedback provided by the system after their performance. Finally, experimental group students and their English teacher answered a survey about their experience working with interactive presentations. Subsequently, a triangulation was made among the results from the pre-test, the post-test, and students´ and teacher’s surveys to identify if interactive presentations affected Basic Intensive English students´ listening comprehension skill at any level. From all discussed above, the importance of the present research relied on the fact that it tried to identify if the implementation of interactive presentations represented significant language learning effects on Basic Intensive English students´ English listening comprehension skill to be designed, developed and incorporated into traditional language learning classes at the Foreign Language Department of the University of El Salvador