In the article the authors present the advantages of some mobile applications that contribute to the improving of listening skills in English.
В статье рассматриваются преимущества некоторых мобильных приложений, способствующих развитию навыков аудирования на английском языке.
Nowadays most of Kazakhstanians, as well as the government pay special attention to learning English. Moreover, English is a core curriculum which is taught to students from very first grades in Kazakhstan. In spite of that, it is not often successful. Students need to attend additional courses in educational centers to enhance their skills of English.
As John Traxler states, mobile learning is “any educational provision where the sole or dominant technologies are handheld or palmtop devices” [1, 262]. Terry Heick gives the following definition, “mobile learning includes mobility-based learning through handheld devices such as smartphones, tablets and wearable technologies” [2]. Mobile learning is an innovative method of the twenty first century, as a modern computing phenomenon, where a learner’s device is embedded with various learning applications. Learning English via a mobile app will boost education by keeping it accessible and by teaching all.
As devices and applications evolve, English listening teaching materials grow in several ways. The use of numerous mobile apps and software allows students to access learning materials everywhere and at any time. Students also can customize their mobile devices with proper learning apps and to allow their own learning development, and also to select materials with specific difficulty to suit their level of proficiency.
Language learning may be defined in the four ways of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Listening is an essential skill of social communication across these elements, and people are considered to obtain new messages more efficiently by listening than reading [3, 25]. Whereas, most English qualification types involve listening ability tests which indicate the significance of cultivating English listening skills.
Listening plays a essential role in the day-to-day interaction and instructional process. According to Muhammad Ali Nizamani, it has been researched that learning second language ought to include listening comprehension, quality of listener and listening comprehension that is purely determined by listening variables (vocabulary knowledge, meta cognition, working memory and auditory discrimination) [4, 229]. Listening comprehension mode helps learners to learn English by listening well. A great deal of listening should be given to the audience to learn English, making the teacher allow students to participate in intensive listening in the classroom. This approach helps students to grasp the meaning, pronunciation, intonation, and alteration of the language flow [5, 979]. To increase the understanding of English, it is important to provide students with audio feedback for learning the language [4, 229], as listening is an essential language skill in learning the language. Vandergrift L. stated listening comprehension can affect the cognitive function of listeners and improve their performance, practice, and achievement in learning the English language [6,168].
There are a range of M-learning applications created for mobile devices that help to learn English, some of which are listed below. The Inlingua language school on the Washington DC website [7] provides the following English listening apps:
1)Busuu
The application offers English courses which teach speaking, writing, listening, grammar and vocabulary. For listening skill, it offers various English dialects that help learners to improve listening comprehension. Moreover, it is popular advantage is social aspect where users can provide feedback to other users’ posts and write own posts providing social communication to exchange their opinion on learning process. The application is the largest social network for learning language since it has about 90 million users.
2)English Listening and Speaking
The English Listening and Speaking Android app focuses on conversational English and everyday speech, and is a perfect alternative for those who want to know how to talk in English. For instance, the app contains thousands of conversations in English with audio and their transcripts. In fact, the software provides games and quizzes to enable learners to become fluent in short time.
Number of conversations and stories offered by the app enable learners to practice vocabulary as well. Moreover, apart from transcription and audio support of conversations, the app has list of irregular verbs so that learners can listen to and learn grammar.
3)English Listening Practice — World Talks
This iOS app helps in building comprehension of English. Learners can improve their listening and speaking skills, accent, and vocabulary with the help of over 1500 lessons offered by the app. Moreover, learner can listen to mixer lessons which provide answers of six different people responding to the same question, thus giving the chance to hear various dialects. To strengthen their knowledge learners can pass comprehension quizzes. The developer also suggests high quality audio, training exercises for all ages, range of vocabulary and accents.
4)LearnEnglish Podcasts
This very application was developed by the British Council. It offers up to twenty hours of podcasts on various topics of everyday conversations. They are organized in the form of interview which make the listening engaging and interesting. All audio is supported with the script and comprehension questions. Moreover, learners can download the audio episodes to listen offline. By listening native speakers’ conversations learners can easily improve their listening skills along with developing their speaking.
5)Learn to Speak English
Although the title of the app states “speak”, it is a good application to develop all skills in English. 900 lessons and 8000 audio files help not only with speaking, but also develop better listening skill. All speakers in the lessons and audio are native. The app offers to listen to the whole conversation or text, as well as chosen sentence only. Moreover, it has the function of recording where learners can record themselves and compare their pronunciation with the native speakers’.
Mobile learning technology has a quick pace of advancement in learning. The interest for utilizing technology in English learning and the need of students to acquire foreign language through devices will increase. In other words, mobile technology makes learning conceivable in a simpler and increasingly advantageous manner. Students can use mobiles in their spare time to learn English when and where they are. Students listen to English listening tasks through applications on their cell phones while strolling in the city, which encourages to integrate foreign language practice into genuine circumstances. Mobiles, in such manner, serve as a component of expanding listening opportunities outside of the study hall.
References:
- Traxler J. DEFINING MOBILE LEARNING. — IADIS International Conference Mobile Learning, pp. 261–266, 2005
- Heick T. The definition of mobile learning. https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/a-definition-for-mobile-learning/
- Luo C. P. English Language Teaching, Vol.1, № 1, June 2008, Vancouver
- Laghari Z. P., Kazi H., Nizamani M. A., Mobile Learning Application Development for Improvement of English Listening Comprehension — IJACSA) International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, Vol. 8, No. 8, pp. 229–237, 2017.
- Gilakjani A. P., Ahmadi, M. R. “A study of factors affecting efl learners' english listening comprehension and the strategies for improvement”, Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 2, pp. 977–988, 2011.
- Vandergrift L., “Facilitating second language listening comprehension: acquiring successful strategies” ELT journal, vol.53, pp.168–176, 1999.
- Inlingua Blog. https://idc.edu/practice-listening-in-english-with-these-apps-and-tools/
