Journal Article Review 10 (CAR)

Reinders, H., & Cho, M.Y. (2010). Extensive Listening Practice and Input Enhancement Using Mobile Phones: Encouraging Out-of-Class Learning with Mobile Phones. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 14 (2), 1-7. Retrieved from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/

The use of handphone is familiar for people around the world. It is not only used by adults but kids also have been known about the use of handphone. Even some studies reveal that language learners in some Asia countries enjoy the learning process through their handphone because they can learn it anytime they want it. Besides, the size of mobile phone is not too big so it is easy to bring everywhere. It also engages situated learning meaning as the learning can happen when the information is connected to the learners. For instance, the learners go to the market with their mother to purchase some goods and then they are able to learn about the vocabulary related to the market while doing another activity.

I would like to review the article journal about extensive listening practice using mobile phones for encouraging out-of class learning. Extensive listening practice is better to be applied in the outside classroom because it stimulates the habit of language so that the students are motivated to learn about it. The researcher uses the audiobook for implementing extensive listening to the class. The book contents are spoken by the book author. Besides, the participants in this project were 69 freshman students studying business administration program at a University in Korea. They were following Academic English for Business Majors course which focused on the development of communicative skills entitled Peaks and Valleys by Spencer Johnson (2009). Most of them were the intermediate level students and their weaknesses were listening and speaking skill.

In this research, the researcher chose the text dominated by conversations and highlighted certain grammatical structures. The highlighted parts had the volume increased to make it noticeable by the students. Then, the audio CDs are converted into mp3 files and uploaded to the university’s course management system. The students are asked to download the audio through their mobile phones. They are also explained by the teacher about the purpose of this activity since this activity is not popular in Korea.

To help students, they are given some background information about the book content. The time for finishing the book is one week. After that, the book content would be discussed in the class so everyone has to listen to the book audio. As the result, the students didn’t feel too much pressure because they only had to memorize the story not the vocabulary or grammar. However, not all of the students liked this strategy. They discovered that the volume changes distracted them and sometimes the recording had technical problem.

In my future class, I think that it is not necessary to make the volume changes for emphasizing grammar or vocabulary. The main purpose of this activity is to make the students motivated to learn listening skill so that they will be more interesting to study listening. The students are expected to be used to with the way of native speak. I also want to replace audio book with audio from the radio or discussion between two people in order to make it interesting since the there are two speakers.