ENGL 4740

Literature Review
The Effect of Computer-Assisted Language
Learning on Iranian Upper-Intermediate EFL
Learners Listening Skill

Group Members (Section 1)

Syaza Akila bt. Zahari (1421428)
Arifah bt. Zakaria (1413376)
Nur Insyirah bt. Ishak (1420586)

Nur Aqileen Nabiha bt. Zarmi (1423986)

 Listening Skill
According to Richard (2006), communicative competence is the goal of language
teaching and communicative competence can be acquired through the four skills;
reading, writing, speaking and listening.

Although listening skill is one of the fundamental skills in the process of language
learning, but listening was not given much attention as this skill was considered as
passive.

Listening comprehension was seen as a skill that can be acquired through the
exposure of the target language and as a consequence skill of learning other skills.

However, the development of theories of the nature of language comprehension has

made listening skill to gain more attention (Richards & Renandya, 2002).

Listening gained more attention and importance in language learning during 1970s
and 1980s.

Cited by Nunan (2002), Rost (1994) said that listening is important as it gives input to
the learners and learning will not happen if there is no input.
 Nature of Listening
Knowing the nature of listening will be very helpful for the teacher to teach this skill.

The nature of listening comprehension has two views; the Bottom-up and the Top-
down processing (Nunan, 2002).

Bottom-up processing = the recognition of the linguistic elements of speech in a

direct fashion.

To make a meaningful text, there are few steps which starts from decoding the
sounds, recognizing the phonemes, producing words, phrases and sentences.

Top-down processing = the expectations and background knowledge that was used
in order to understand what the speaker intend to day.

The listener will use the sounds as clues and their background of knowledge
according to the context and situation to reconstruct what the speaker means.
 Teaching Listening
The development in teaching of listening has been influenced by the methodologies
in language teaching and communicative language teaching along with advances in
the technologies.

All this development has allow the learners of language to approach another variety
of the spoken target language from different sources.

Second language proficiency can developed and improved as the importance in

learning listening skill became clear to the teacher and learner.

The traditional method of teaching listening where the learners were asked to listen
to a text and answer some questions cannot be used as it is not seen as teaching. It
is more on testing the learners.
1. The first point of teaching listening is, learners should be taught how to go about
getting the meaning in teaching listening and asking the learners to listen on the
provided listening materials does not mean that it is teaching. (Mendelsohn, 2006)

So strategies can be helpful in learning listening skill should be taught by the

teachers and they also need to develop their skills using the strategies.

2. Another important point is the materials that used by teachers to teach listening.
Listening skill can only be achieved through input but it has to be an effective input.

A mere exposure to input does not secured the language acquisition.

The input need to be understand by the learners and based on the perceived input,
the learners need to engage in interactions or communications.

3. The last important point is teachers need to make sure to teach the processes that
mentioned above; bottom-up and top-down processes.

This is to ensure that the learners can use their background knowledge as well as
identifying the elements of speech and linking the elements to form interactions.
CALL (Computer-Assisted Language
Learning)

According to Richards and Schmidt (2010) and Davies (2012), computer can be an aid
for both teacher and student in teaching and learning of a foreign language.

The computer can act as a tool to assist and facilitate both teacher and student in
language learning.

However, it cannot replace the role of a teacher in language learning class because the
presence of the teacher is still very important.

Therefore, the teacher should know how to use the CALL in an effective way as it can
help to be an aid in language class and also to get the best result in learners listening
comprehension.
CALL and Listening Skill
The role of CALL in the development of listening is very important as there are
significant positive effects to learners listening comprehension by using CALL.

It has been proven by many researches that the effect of using CALL in developing
listening comprehension has been more effective compared to traditional approaches.

These researches by Reddy (2015), Nachoua (2012) and Barani (2011) concluded that CALL
has motivated the learners to improve their ability in listening comprehension.

Moreover, by using computer a tool, it enhanced the performance of the learners

listening comprehension in language classes.

Meihami and Varmaghani (2013) believe that CALL materials helped the learners to work
more effectively on listening tasks.

Learners used less energy and they get less exhausted in CALL environment compared
to traditional methods.

Therefore, CALL can have significant role in developing learners listening

comprehension.