Article Summary: E-learning in lifelong education: A computational approach to determining listening comprehension ability by Cem Işık & Sümeyra Yılmaz

The study was conducted by Cem Işık & Sümeyra Yılmaz from Springer Science under Education Info Business Media Publication in 2011. The research was motivated by some research questions related to CALL listening instruction. It was intended to show whether or not computer assisted listening instruction had an effect on the listening comprehension proficiency of learners. The goal was to investigate how beneficial CALL could be for a second language learner and whether or not a learner would show any improvement in performance. In addition, another aim of this study was to evaluate the students’ attitudes towards computer-assisted learning.

Participants in the study were placed in two groups an experimental and a control group. None of the groups received any listening instruction outside of the study during the experimental period. After the pre-test, the experimental group studied in a language laboratory with computers and the control group took classes in a traditional classroom with tape recorder. The experiment lasted 4 weeks in which ten units of listening activities were given to both groups, using the same content materials in the two different formats.

At the beginning of the study, there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of their performance in the first unit scores. However, a significant difference emerged between the experimental and control group in the rest of the units. The experimental group showed significantly greater progress during the treatment after the first unit. Statistical analysis of the post-test showed that the 24 hours of computer assisted study had a positive effect on the experimental group’s achievement in the post-test. Cem Işık & Sümeyra Yılmaz are both agree that computer assisted instruction did create an effect on listening skills of students when compared with the control group which received traditional classroom listening instruction. When computers are used in language instruction, the learning pace is faster.  They concluded that the computer assisted listening instruction affected the experimental group’s learning pace greatly in a positive manner compared with traditional listening instruction.

The research also looked at the comparative results between genders and there was no significant difference between females and males in the pre-test. However, when the researchers compared females in control group with males in experimental group in terms of their post-test results, they saw that there was no significant difference between both genders but females in the control group were more successful. On the other hand, females in the experimental group were more successful than males in control group and a significant difference was seen between them.

The conclusion that the researchers had found is that computer assisted instruction did create a quantifiable important effect on listening skills of students when compared with the control group which received traditional classroom listening instruction. When computers are used in language instruction, the learning pace is faster. In this study, Cem Işık & Sümeyra Yılmaz concluded that the computer assisted listening instruction affected the experimental group’s learning pace greatly in a positive manner.