The Use Teaching Materials as a Motivator to Enhance Students' Listening Comprehension in Lectures

Abstract

Nowadays, the advanced technologies provide opportunities to develop the teaching and learning process in which teachers can support their teaching with using some devices and tools (such as videos, computers, OHP, pictures, etc) that facilitate the teaching tasks. These devices can also develop students’ learning abilities and improve their language skills. The present research attempts to investigate the use of teaching materials in enhancing first year students’ listening comprehension. In our study, we have tried to answer series of interrelated research questions and we have focused on two main hypotheses. The first is whether the teachers are aware of students’ need for teaching materials or not? The second concerns the use of teaching materials to develop students’ language skills in general and listening skill in particular. To answer these questions; we proceeded through the descriptive method. We gathered data through designing two questionnaires administered to representative samples of first year students and their teachers of English at the department of Foreign Languages at Biskra University. The findings of this study support our hypotheses and allow us to emphasize the importance of teaching materials as having a great impact on students’ level of achievements. The results clearly indicate that both teachers and students support teaching and learning with the aid of teaching materials in the classroom. However, the lack of these materials in our classrooms greatly contributed in students’ low performance in the listening ability. The students showed great desire to listen to authentic language and be familiar with the use of this language and also improve their listening abilities. Besides that, the results revealed that teaching materials have a very important role in enhancing students listening comprehension. Finally, we recommended that in order to develop teachers’ awareness of the important use of teaching materials, the authorities, heads of department and the teachers themselves should take responsibilities to organize classrooms and amphitheaters equipped with teaching materials that are useful for improving students’ listening comprehension.