بِسْــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِالرَّحْمَنِ اارَّحِيم

Maria Jesus Blasco Mayor writes a paper entitled “CALL-enhanced L2 Listening Skills – Aiming for Automatization in a Multimedia Environment.” in aiming to propose current information on processing theories and L2 (Second language) listening comprehension research. There are many recent studies on L2 listening comprehension but a special attention is on L2 related to the field of psycholinguistics. In this field, the input or acoustic signal is first processed phonetically, and then the listener tries to identify the words and constructs sentences according to what they had heard. All these ways are involving on what they can recall from something that they heard. The research is carried out because to achieve learner’s automatization of L2 input processing and also to upgrade the level of proficiency among L2 learners from a lower-intermediate to an advanced L2 listening competence.

However, listening skill has been abandoned for many years before because many believed that to acquire a language, one does not have to take into account the ability to be a good listener, he or she only has to be good in speaking, writing, reading and grammar. But, only recently the listening skill has begun to spark its glow and many researchers are begin to see it as important as the other skills. As quoted in the research, "A neglected macroskill for decades, developing listening comprehension skill is now considered crucial for L2 acquisition." (Mayor, 2009, p.1). 

Thus, in the research, it is stated that to acquire language, it is not the skills that matter but the materials used are much more important. Therefore, the researcher uses a view from Richard (1993) where he argues that “instructional materials do make a difference when it comes to teaching – therefore we believe that special attention should be paid to the design of materials that are a) based on recent research b) appropriate to language proficiency; c) motivating and d) technologically state-of-the-art.”

In today’s multimedia society, listening can be done through CALL (Computer assisted language learning). Academically, to enhance L2 listening training, the students can use the help of video where they understand the language visually and acoustically. This is strongly argued by Jones (2003) where the use of multimodal media in CALL helps the learner comprehends acoustic input. In addition, a high number of learners, especially the least proficient, benefit from both acoustic and visual text cues to increase their comprehension performance.

The sample which is chosen by the researcher in this study is a group of foreign language learners. They were evaluated in terms of their listening comprehension skill by using many means such as gradual approach, simpler and complex oral texts and tasks, the use of video and audio and latest digital technology. However, to carry out the research by using video and audio, the participants were divided into groups of skilled listeners and unskilled listeners.

            Throughout the research,  pre-listening task, while-listening task and post-listening task were conducted. The pre-listening task is used to prepare the listener’s cognitive. Thus, the techniques that can be used are brainstorming, word mapping, lists of keywords, oral repetition and explanation of vocabulary items.

           For while-listening task, it can be varied according to learner’s proficiency. It is includes intermediate, upper-intermediate and advance level learners. But, overall, they must understand and summarize the oral text just from what they heard even if it is only the gist of it.

During the post-listening task, the listener can consolidate the language in terms of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, discourse features and cultural items. They have to make a full use of whatever knowledge they encountered in the previous phases and do a tougher task such as to transcript a particular speech fragment.

Without doubt, in all three stages of tasks, in several activities when the participants are doing the listening tasks, simultaneously viewing skill is also involved. However, rather than viewing, it is more depend on listening. It is also the same when using video as a method of teaching, what can be found is that, it only produces more passive learners. Highly proficient learners can get benefit from it but, those with lower proficiency can only guess what is going on in the movie and what are the characters talking about. It shows that by only viewing the material without understands it, will not help the participants to be better listeners. This is because, when they hear something that they do not understand, they will not pay any attention and they rather looking around them than to look at the screen.

The purposes to let listeners use CALL to enhance their listening skill because it has a wide range of listening strategies such as predicting, guessing, recognizing discourse markers, stress and intonation and making use of context clues and non verbal clues. Computer-based learning also provides instructions on how to comprehend fragments, summarize information, focus on form either acoustically or graphically and they also can know how to learn by using software especially in listening practice and make it as their daily routine.         

Listening skill is not something to be push aside anymore. When learners try to improve reading and oral skills, they will need listening skill to assist them. When they read or speak loudly, they have to hear their voices to make sure that they are using the correct pronunciation and eventually can be good readers and speakers. Thus, listening skill is not only related to watching videos or to enhance focus but also as a mean to improve learners’ language skills.

            Lastly, there is one digital platform or website which is currently used named Labint. It has been operating for three years now with its original intention was to guide the lab users and gradually developed into E-Lab. Now, it is used for Interpreting classes and English as a second language and self-access activities.