Audiovisual material in language teaching: Learners’ perspective

Abstract

In order to teach listening and speaking skills to second language learners, video is considered to be a very effective instrument. Video clips provide learners with real use of the target language enabling them to see the speakers while listening to them. It helps them to know the target culture as well. Video clips have many more advantages on second language teaching leaning situation. However, while using video clips in language classes, both instructors and learners face a number of problems. This research aims at finding out the problematic issues of watching video in language classes from the learners’ perspective in Bangladeshi context. In order to do so, a survey was done among a sample of tertiary level students learning English as a second language, who have exposure to video clips in their language class. The analysis of the responses reveals that there arise a number of problems while incorporating video clips in the lesson plan. Sometimes, the video becomes too difficult for the learners to understand; it becomes so fast that the learners cannot keep pace with it; the information is not always familiar to them; the tasks related to it are too easy for them; and there are technological problems in the classroom.