Task 2 (Article Review)

Teaching EFL to the iGeneration: A Survey of Using YouTube as Supplementary Material with College EFL Students in Taiwan

CALL-EJ Online
ISSN 1442-438X
Vol.10, No.2,February 2009

This article is taken from http://www.tell.is.ritsumei.ac.jp/callejonline/journal/10-2/kelsen.html


About the author:

Brant Kelsen has been a lecturer in the International Language and Cultural Center at Yuan Ze University for the past two years. He also has experienced teaching English at language schools, universities, governmental organizations and private corporations in Japan,Thailand and Taiwan.His field of interest are student motivation,the use of technology in education,collaborative learning and second language writing.

The aims of the research:

This research describes about the use of YouTube as supplementary material with EFL students in Taiwan.Specifically, the researcher is interested to survey the students' attitudes towards the use of YouTube to study English and also their perception of using YouTube as a supplement to regular class material with regard to: (i) making classes more interesting; (ii) being relevant to course materials; (iii) being beneficial to language learning; (iv) motivating students to learn in class,and (v) motivating students to use material to learn English outside of class.

The methodology:

The participants of this research came from two sophomore conversation classes.
(31 and 38 students) and all of them were the students of a private university in northern Taiwan. Both classes were using the same textbooks and materials. These students who were from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science were both majoring in Chemistry. The students' age were between 19-21 years old with Mandarin as their first language. All were taking the conversation class which was the only English language course for the semester.

In order to collect the data, the respective instructor has given a simple questionnaire asking about their gender, access to computers and experiences using Youtube prior to this course on the first day of class of the Fall semester,2007. The instructor has used the material from the YouTube website to supplement the textbook throughout the semester and the YouTube videos has also included the clips related to the topics selected from the textbook to be taught in English class. The example of video clips used to supplement the textbooks materials are displayed below.

YouTube Video Clip One


YouTube Video Clip Two

The students (n=62) were given a follow- up questionnaire on the last day of class. This questionnaire was distributed in order to survey the students' habit in using YouTube. The questions were based on a 5 point Likert scale,with "strongly disagree" scoring one and "scoringly agree" scoring five. The questions also included an open-ended portion to allow the students to express their additional comments if they have one.

The subject/sample:

The subject that participated in this research came from two sophomore conversation classes.(31 and 38 students) and all of them were studying in a private university in northern Taiwan.These students(n=69) were from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and both were majoring in Chemistry. The students' age ranges from 19-21 years old and they spoke Mandarin as their first language.

The findings of the research:

According to the results of the questionnaires distributed on the first and last days of the class revealed that students found the experience of using YouTube to be interesting, relevant,beneficial and motivating in class. Looking back at the students' comments, most comments were supportive towards the use of YouTube as supplementary material and just several students gave less positive feedback relating to the use of YouTube outside of the classroom.All in all, the researcher hypothesized that YouTube can be used as authentic material input and also as a motivation tool to the students.

Reflection:

In my opinion, this research is very interesting because it discusses about the popular clip site, YouTube to be used as supplementary material in English class. As for me, I totally agree if YouTube is used in Malaysian English classroom because based on my experience during the 3 months of teaching practicum in SMK Seafield, I found that my students enjoyed learning English more when I used Youtube mainly in my Literature class.
After reading the research thoroughly, I would say that this research is well conducted because of several reasons. First of all, I can understand the inputs conveyed by the researcher very well.Next, the research is actively involved by both parties, the instructors and students and thus make it as one of the well conducted research.For instance,it is noted in the research that not only the instructors can select the materials but students have freedom to suggest video clips to be used in English class. Besides that, the result attained by the researcher at the end of the research shows that the research is conducted well as the results successfully match with the purposes of the research.
Personally, I think that this research could bring various impacts in the context of learning and teaching of ESL in general and Malaysian English classroom alone.
According to this research, YouTube has been the available authentic pop culture material and can act as a motivator element for students as they will try to develop their English skills in order to understand the content of the material. Therefore, I believe that the students of Malaysian English classroom will also be motivated to learn English if this method is implemented in class. Apart from that,YouTube is useful as it provides the authentic examples of everyday English used by everyday people.Hence, if YouTube is used in EFL/ESL class,students will feel they are learning the target language as it is used outside of the classroom. Besides that, according to British Council site, YouTube can be used in English language classroom for various purposes like learning listening skills,teaching vocabulary, accents, pronunciations, voice modulation and. All in all, YouTube can be used to teach the four skills which are reading,writing,listening and speaking.However, there are challenges in using Youtube like the poor sound quality may hinder the listening skills activity and sometimes the accents and slangs used by the speakers in the clips are hard to be understood and this may discourage the low proficiency level students to learn English. However, the use of Youtube in classroom promotes learner autonomy since the students can access Youtube to study English inside and outside of the classroom on their own. In conclusion, YouTube gives more positive implications in teaching and learning of ESL. However, educators must know on how to utilize the tool wisely to support and advance the learning process. Like Dr Judi Harris(1998) said " It's not about how we use the TOOLS but it's about HOW we use the tools.