In view of the growing variety of opportunities and resources that nowadays are available to support out-of-school learning, the present study attempted to identify the extent to which students enhance their listening comprehension and vocabulary range through out-of-class listening activities. The aforementioned activities may consist of watching films in the English language, listening to music, playing online games in English and similar practices. Researchers have tried to shed light on the importance of listening as being one of the most important skills to be mastered in order to learn a foreign language, and yet it is often the most neglected skill in the classroom. The effects of out-of-school exposure to English as a foreign language on the development of the language skills have proven to be superior to or just as good as those of formal instruction. Listening can help students build vocabulary, develop language proficiency, and improve language usage. Furthermore, it provides the auditory input which is needed for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in verbal communication.
This study was carried out in Kosovo with 514 elementary school students in the ninth grade (14-15 years old). Through the use of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study explored students’ attitudes towards out-of-school listening and learning tools as well as their effects on students’ English language listening proficiency and vocabulary acquisition. A number of instruments were used for measuring the correlation between out-of-school listening exposure and students’ listening proficiency and vocabulary acquisition. These included standardized listening comprehension and vocabulary tests; questionnaires for students and semi-structured interviews with a focus group of students; and semi-structured teacher interviews in order to investigate the topic from a different point of view and add depth to the quantitative results. The non-parametric procedures such as the Spearman rank-order correlation, Chi square, Mann-Whitney U, Wilcoxon Signed Rank, Kruskal-Wallis, and Friedman tests were the statistical tools used to analyse the quantitative data. Other procedures such as the usual set of descriptive parameters, including frequencies, arithmetic means, standard deviations, etc., were used as supporting indicators throughout the data analysis. Data processing was carried out using the statistical package IBM SPSS 25. Interviews were transcribed, coded and classified. We examined the classification in order to identify relationships between general terms, and investigated the patterns, commonalities and differences in order to make sense of the data and finally elaborate, build, and test the theory. All these instruments enabled the triangulation of the study.
Our data show that there is a significant positive correlation between the amount of out-of-school exposure to English language and listening skills and vocabulary acquisition. The explored forms of exposure that have shown to have a significant correlation in increasing students’ interest to learn English are audio-visual contents in English without subtitles, listening to music in English, out-of-school communication in English, and playing online games, whereas audio-visual English contents with Albanian subtitles, listening to radio programmes in English and playing home video games (as opposed to online video games) proved to have no significant relation to the level of interest in learning English. The favourable attitude towards the private language school contents as a major influential factor in learning English appeared distinguishable in terms of students’ level of listening and vocabulary proficiency. Listening to music, active speaking in English, and gaming proved to be the most enjoyable out-of-school exposure activities for the participants in our study. The results show that students use different listening strategies based on their preferences and habits, and the ones that use the top-down processing proved to be the best performers in the listening tests. Moreover, the results from the interviews show that there are similar positive perceptions amongst teachers and students regarding the relationship between out-of-school exposure and listening skills and vocabulary acquisition, and also between students’ motivation and the improvement of listening skills and vocabulary.
Understanding the relationship between out-of-school exposure and students’ listening skills and vocabulary acquisition enables the use of out-of-school listening tools in language classrooms. The scientific contribution of this study is twofold: first, it contributes theoretically to the body of literature that examines the development of listening skills and vocabulary acquisition in a second language, and the connection between out-of-school exposure and students’ listening skills and vocabulary acquisition, creating an innovative synthesis in the field. Secondly, it contributes to the educational policy evaluation field in terms of shedding light on how educational policy development can be responsive so that teaching and learning opportunities are maximized. Based on the key findings, recommendations for reducing the differences in the listening skill levels among the three groups of learners (weak, average, strong) are offered. The results also offer an opportunity to open the discussion about involving technology in classrooms and hence provide a possibility to improve students’ English listening skills and vocabulary acquisition.
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