Role of media in developing English language listening and speaking skills

The main focus of this paper is on the influence of the audiovisual media on children’s acquisition of the listening and speaking skill in English as a foreign language (EFL). The theoretical part talks about children’s language acquisition from the perspective of language input and about some other factors that influence language acquisition, such as age, linguistic environment, presence of English in the media and the role of audiovisual media in the lives of Croatian children. A hypothesis, that audiovisual media are beneficial in language acquisition, particularly in the area of the listening skill and pronunciation and fluency, while accuracy stays unaffected, is put forward. The research part mostly confirms the hypothesis, with one crucial difference. The male students benefit in the area of accuracy, while the results for the female students are opposite