This paper discusses the elaboration of listening materials utilizing H5P technology to improve listening skills in second language teaching and learning through an interactive and engaging approach. It also examines the challenges and relevance of the listening skills in this context. Students’ feedback and their performance were promising, although there remains potential for improvement regarding this type of material. Key considerations proved to be particularly important, such as the correlation between the difficulty and the speed, the timing, and whether to use or not written texts. Moreover, probably the most relevant advantage of these listening tasks is their ability to empower learners by providing greater autonomy and control over their learning experience, allowing them as well to practice at their own pace, either in class or at home.

 

Keywords: second language teaching and learning, H5P technology, listening skills, language skills, interactive materials.

 

 

 

Cinderella. That’s what some call the language skill this article focuses on (Listening: a Cinderella Story, n.d.). Although the four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, writing) taught in any second language teaching and learning module or course are theoretically of equal importance since one must be able to speak in the target language, as well as write, read, and understand what is told in that language. Nevertheless, of the four language skills, listening frequently receives less attention than the others (see Table 1) (Field, 2009 and Walker, 2014).

 

 

Table 1. Amount of research done about language skills, adapted from Listening: a Cinderella Story (n.d.).

 

To address this, a group of colleagues developed interactive videos using H5P technology in the hope that this would be both helpful and engaging. These resources are designed to meet the learning outcomes and address the needs of Spanish teaching and learning (T&L) as a second language (L2) within the first-year module SPA002 at XJTLU, normally taken in the second semester by beginners who already have some basic knowledge. 

 

The listening skill is too often referred to as “the forgotten skill” (Walter, 2014:167). Teachers need to deal with several challenges regarding resources and technology, such as finding or creating suitable aural material. Simultaneously, learners face several difficulties when practicing listening comprehension in L2 T&L which must be carefully considered.

 

 

• Difficulties related to pronunciation
  • Pronunciation of words differ from how they appear in print
  • Differentiation of the words’ boundaries
  • “Prosodic characteristics of spoken discourse, such as where the stress falls” (p.168)

 

• Difficulties related to spoken discourse
  • “Rarely presents consistently complete sentences” (p. 168)
  • A more colloquial use of vocabulary and grammar

 

• Difficulties related to aural materials
  • A mental representation is the only residue of the listening process, unlike the reading tasks, where the text remains constantly available for reference, allowing for re-examination if needed.
  • Listeners normally lack control over the speakers’ speed which limits their ability to regulate the pace at which they must process their spoken discourse” (p.168)

 

This skill is especially important for beginners, as “a comprehension-before-production approach can facilitate language acquisition, particularly in the early stages.” (Nunan, 1998:4). This importance may be linked to the Linguistic Threshold Theory (LTH). According to this theory, the proficiency that learners have in language skills regarding their mother tongue (L1) influences their ability to practice and acquire skills in second language learning (L2). An additional 14% of successful listening comprehensionin L2 can be attributed to the learner’s L1 listening comprehension ability (Vandergrift, 2006).

 

According to Nunan (1998), from Hong Kong University, ideally listening tasks’ materials should be as follows (p. 7):

 

• Materials based on authentic texts with dialogues and monologues
• “Schema-building tasks should precede the listening” (p. 7)
• Materials should incorporate strategies for effective listening
• “Learners should be given opportunities to progressively structure their listening by listening to a text multiple times, and by engaging in increasingly challenging listening tasks” (p. 7)
• Learners should know the purpose and reason for that task
• The task must allow learners to play an active role in their learning process
• “Content should be personalized” (p. 7)

 

When we observe the overall time spent on each language skill (see Table 2), the great importance of the listening skill is clear, as it occupies one of the highest percentages (Walker, 2014 and Bozorgian, 2012).

 

 

Table 2. Daily communication time spent. Adapted from Walker (2014) and Bozorgian (2012).

 

There are different types of listening tasks and approaches designed to cater to different challenges in listening and to accommodate several levels of difficulty and proficiency (Gu, 2018:4). This is because listening involves more than a matter of identifying sounds and words, it requires gaining a real listening comprehension ability (Liubinienè, 2009). For instance, there is the intensive listening task, consisting of decoding specific sounds, grammar, and words, this is, what the speaker says. Conversely, there is the selective learning task, aimed at encouraging learners to search for information (Gu, 2018:2). Regarding these materials we developed with H5P, we tried to combine both types.

 

Interactive multimedia establishes a reciprocal interaction between the program/media and the user, requiring the learner (the user) to take an active role in computer-assisted learning (Ampa, 2015). This approach is particularly effective in providing immediate feedback to enhance the learning progress in a more autonomous manner, and to engage learners who are, due to their age, digital natives (Counselman-Carpenter and Aguilar, 2022). Furthermore, we extensively used images to support aural materials, as this can help to “enhance comprehension, storage, and recall of information” (Meskill, 1996:180). 

 

When we started this project, we posed the following question: How engaging H5P technology, quiz questions and drag & drop questions are in second language T&L regarding listening tasks? This research question highlights the use of this technology applied in second language T&L by incorporating various types of questions that provided immediate feedback and visual support, which collectively could be both appealing and beneficial for learners.

 

 

 

A flexible series of interactive tasks was developed to revise all module units at the end of the semester and to be used in future academic years. We designed materials with authentic texts following Nunan's (1998) advice and always based on the syllabus. As for the timing, materials were tested during the revision week across 12 groups as in-class activities.

 

Different types of tasks were included: aural materials, videos with speakers, open-ended questions where students typed the answer in the box, quiz questions as well as drag & drop activities to organize the provided information. These interactive videos last between 2 and 3 minutes, and learners have control over the way the video is played so that they can stop, go backward and forward, and repeat the tasks as much as they wish. This approach offers learners more freedom and control over their learning experience compared to traditional in-class activities.

 

When assigning these tasks through the XJTLU platform Learning Mall, students’ performance was tracked, providing teachers with valuable information about their student’s learning progress and level of engagement. Additionally, the interactive videos with quiz questions assessed and provided feedback by showing the correct answer and allowing learners to retry when their responses were incorrect.

 

Some technical requirements were necessary because learners were meant to complete these listening tasks individually at their own pace in class: a device (smartphone, laptop, or tablet) and headphones. An important part of the data collected came from feedback provided by 166 students through an anonymous online survey and direct feedback from the module’s leader/MC.

 

These five interactive tasks made with H5P are as follows:

 

• Revision of interactive video with SPA001 contents to revise important previous contents
  1. Open questions and quiz questions

 

• Unit 5: describing people
  1. Interactive video about family, physical appearance, and clothing
  2. Dialogue with quiz questions
  3. Extra visual support with pictures made with AI

 

• Unit 6: daily routine, times and activities
  1. Monologue explaining someone’s daily routine
  2. Drag and drop tasks with a big timetable

 

• Unit 7: food, gastronomy and recipes
  1. The only non-listening activity, but a reading task
  2. This task consisted of a video and sentences describing the steps needed to prepare the dish following the recipe shown in the video
  3. The task consists of dragging and dropping the given sentences in the right order according to what they see in the video

 

• Unit 8: places and the city
  1. Video about planning holidays
  2. Dialogue with little visual support in the video, but with a big map of Madrid city with the places mentioned in the dialogue marked to help students both locate different types of places and familiarize themselves with one of the most visited cities in Spain

 

Figure 1. Screenshots of interactive video-task 5 (up) and drag&drop-task 3 (down).

 

 

 

1. Quantitative data:

 

Quantitative data come from learners’ feedback through an anonymous online survey. The listening part includes the following questions:

 

1. Please, mark from 1 to 5 the following aspects about the listening tasks.
   1. Difficulty to understand.
   2. Speakers’ speed.
   3. How helpful this material is?
   4. Quality of the audio material.
2. Please, mark what you found more useful to learn about the Spanish language and culture with these materials.
3. Would you like to have more listening practice with interactive materials like these?
4. Here you can give us any additional feedback if you wish.

 

Regarding question 1a, 44.58% of respondents found these tasks normal in terms of difficulty, 37.35% considered them difficult, and 10.24% found them very difficult. Moreover, question 1b, which focuses on the speed of the tasks, reveals a similar distribution: 50% of our respondents felt the speed was normal, but 39.76% found it fast, and 8.43% considered it very fast.

 

Figure 2. Comparing difficulty and speed of materials according to learners’ feedback.

 

Concerning question 1c, 37.35% of respondents found these materials very helpful, 41% found them helpful, while 19.90% regarded them as normal. Therefore, the majority of participants perceived the materials as helpful to varying degrees.

 

As for the audio quality (question 1d), most of the respondents found it high (42.77%) or relatively high(43.37%), except for 13.25% who rated it as normal and 0.6 % relatively poor.

 

Regarding question 2, 83.73% of participants found the topics related to their learning/revision needs useful; 83.73% also valued the vocabulary and grammar in line with their learning needs; and 81.93% appreciated useful aspects regarding the listening practice appropriate to their level and learning needs. As for the information about cultural aspects, only 56.63% found it useful. As for question 3, most of the participants (93%) expressed a desire for more materials of this nature, while only 5.4% did not know and 1.81% did not want additional materials (see Figure 3).

 

 

Figure 3. Question 2 results about learning contents.

 

 

According to comments made by participants in question 4, they found these materials enjoyable and helpful. One participant suggested that it would be nice to practice with these materials during their free time. Nevertheless, several aspects were pointed out that should be considered carefully.

 

Many students requested transcripts to help them both in listening and revision. Some suggested subtitles although they did not specify the language. However, this could be problematic, as relying on reading subtitles could make the listening tasks too easy, not improving the listening skills. Moreover, if learners can rely on what they read regardless of their listening comprehension, this could potentially mislead teachers about the actual progress of learners.  Thus, incorporating written text to support the experience could be considered in certain situations, but it should be done very carefully to ensure that learners still face the challenge of understanding what they hear.

 

When testing these listening tasks in class, participants required an average of 45 minutes to review all the H5P interactive videos in one session. This duration was partly influenced by the time needed for the task covering unit 6, which focused on routine and timetable.

 

Finally, the MC of the SPA002 module provided valuable feedback regarding the speed and difficulty level of the H5P-based listening tasks. Specifically, she found the task for Units 5 and 8 were too challenging due to the speed of the speakers.

 

 

 

Interactive multimedia can make the learning process more interesting and provide increased motivation to learn (Ampa, 2015). As the survey’s results indicate, 93% of participants wanted more materials of this kind to practice both in class and independently.

 

A listening practice of having some control over the aural materials is highly convenient in the learning process (listening multiple times, being able to stop it, pause, going backward and forwards). This is particularly important regarding listening, as “if a stretch of speech is not understood at the moment it is heard, it is extremely hard to relive it in memory” (Field,2009:4).

 

There is a possible correlation between speed and difficulty, as suggested by many of the participants’ comments and the comparable percentages in both questions 1a and 1b. Lowering the speed to adapt better to the level of difficulty, could slow the learning progress of those learners with better listening skills (half of them) if learners could have the chance to slow it down a little for those who might need it that would be an improvement in materials development with H5P for listening tasks.

 

The interactive task covering unit 6, which involved dragging and dropping items (verbs about daily activities) in the right cell of a weekly timetable, proved to be particularly challenging, as reflected in participants’ feedback.  The difficulty did not stem primarily from the monologue’s speed or complexity, but due to the number of questions. To address this, the task could be simplified by reducing the number of items to drag and drop because timing is a crucial factor, and students complained when the task took too long. We believe that, ideally, each task should take no longer than 10 minutes to maintain learners’ attention and motivation. Furthermore, it might be a good idea to rethink our approach to incorporating cultural aspects into these materials, with the goal of making them more appealing, interesting, and useful.

 

In conclusion, these listening tasks made with interactive videos created with H5P technology proved to be enjoyable, helpful, and suitable to the module and level they targeted. However, there are several aspects for improvement. Moreover, the possibility of including scripts should be considered properly, perhaps as additional feedback after each task, enabling learners to better understand their scores and the feedback given.

 

 

 

The potential of utilizing H5P technology for listening tasks can be further explored through several improvements. One approach is to adjust the level of difficulty by lowering the speed of speakers. Moreover, to reduce the difficulty and time needed for each task, perhaps the same video could developed in two versions with varied questions: one designed for in-class activities and the other one for self-study.

 

Additionally, more goals could be included in future projects to create listening materials that encompass not only key syllabus contents but also cultural aspects and pragmatics (such as politeness, history, music, arts, society, politics, and geography). To further enrich these materials, several actors could be added in future creations to have a wider variety of voices and accents or several AI tools could be used instead to include as many Spanish accents and realistic voices as wished.

 

More importantly, the methodology needs to be improved. The listening skill is probably less understood by experts in L2, which might negatively affect materials development, teachers’ training, and classroom practices (Field, 2009). This issue particularly matters to learners with low listening proficiency in their mother tongue (L1) (Vandergrift, 2006). Normally listening skill is measured regarding achievement rather than on how effectively students are taught to listen and comprehend. “To elevate the status of listening in the language classroom, they need a deeper understanding of the skill and about how it operates.” (Field,2009:6).

 

 

 

 

 

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