Introduction:

Technology has never stopped developing. It has become an inseparable part of

people' life. Also, it has brought many benefits to humans’life. In other words,
people can now get what they want to know in no time and via whatever
resources they see appropriate. The technological developments have played
important role in the success of mankind in many avenues. The use of
technology has become very competitive, and there is a growing need for
quality modern technology.
Nowadays, technology has made learning a foreign language easier, and various
technologies have been developed as supplementary materials to support
learners. As a reusult, the methods of teaching or learning a foreign language
have shifted from traditional practices to integrations with technology. This
change comes with an aim to engage learners to use various ways to practice
foreign language while simultaneously increasing their attention spans and
attraction for the language.
The Internet, as an example of technology, has started to be widely used in
almost every aspect of our life and in all fields consisting of second language
education at all levels. In reality, there are many valid online interactive
resources on the Internet. With the Internet, any foreign language learners can
easily communicate with native speakers at any time and in any place from
school, home or work.
In this way, the Internet is considered as an optimal place for learning any
foreign languages. The Internet seems to be part of individuals' life, especially
for EFL students. As such, teachers should provide teaching sources available
on it such as audio, videos and podcast, and so on. Generally, teachers should
have digital and technological skills in order to teach their students online
effectively. They should have the ability to use, exploit and apply digital
technologies in all educational activities.
The Internet plays an essential role in education, especially in foreign language
teaching and learning. It has forced both teachers and learners to be innovative
and creative to search for suitable teaching and learning materials. As a result,
there are many new teaching and learning media, especially in EFL. One media
platform on the Internet that can provide huge learning or teaching resources is
YouTube videos.
By using Youtube videos, EFL students can watch images, scenes, and/or
scenarioswhile listening from the Youtube videos. Furthermore, the use of You
tube videos can assist students in keeping their interests in the language as well
as broaden their knowledge or comprehension as the images can give them
more insight about the content of the videos than that of the audio recording.
It is no wonder that YouTube is a top-rated online video- sharing website where
students they can watch, upload, and share videos. It can provide them with
everyday videos and authentic situations that may help them improve their
understanding and performance in foreign language, especially in their English
listening skills. It is an Internet-based educational tool that allows students to
easily maintain content due to the graphics and videos it presents to them.
There are numerious rationales and reasons for using YouTube videos in
developing and enhancing foreign language skills, in general, and English
listening skills, in particular. At first, they can facilitate students’ listening skills
due to visual clues such as body languages and some details of the setting.
Moreover, students have positive attitudes towards using them in English
listening skills. Another rationale is that they can help students increase not only
listening skills but also understanding of culture. Through above reasons, it is
very clear to demonstrate that YouTube videos can provide students with
several opportunities to practice optimal modified input, receive immediate and
personalized feedback, explore variety of resources available, get a fair
exposure to a great diversity of listening materials, keep track of their progress,
obtain authentic examples , enrich their vocabulary, get information faster and
feel more confident in dealing with the lesson as they not only depend on their
listening skills but also on their comprehension.
According to Cakir (2006); Xiaoning (2007); Gorjian (2014) and Rokni and
Ataee (2014), videos on Youtube provide authentic language inputs that can
create a meaningful language learning environment for foreign language
learners. In such authentic contexts, learners come across real objects and
situations.
Hypotheses of the study
Listening skill is one of the most important skills in English learning. In spite of
its significance, it had less attention compared to the other skills. These
problems and difficulties are noticed and seen out of many EMJ students'
experience in learning English language at Nha Trang university.
More particularly, EMJ students face several difficulties while listening to
recordings such as: comprehending the spoken context, maintaining their
attention to what is spoken in listening comprehension class, understanding the
content of the spoken text when coming across any unfamiliar words, catching
the intended message, realizing the main idea, predicting the detailed
information of the speakers from the recording played, identifying particular
information, making inference, and finding the related vocabulary. These
obstacles have made them depressed, looked confused and bored, were not
interested and lazy and were passive while their teacher dominated the
classroom listening activities. In turn, they became demotivated to practice their
English listening skills.
In addition, they mentioned some reasons for such problems, among them," The
lack of exposure to the target language leaves students with a very narrow
comprehension of it ", "Listening cassettes or CDs is hard to find" , "Textbooks
are not equipped well with listening audio materials or CDs" ,"Many teachers
often ignore listening lessons and prioritize writing, reading, and vocabulary
skills", "The materials difficulty level is not suitable for students’ level"
Dealing with the problems and difficulties mentioned above. One of the most
appropriate learning tools that EMJ students can utilize to enhance their
listening skills is the use of You tube videos.
Significance of the study
The significance of the study derives from the fact that it tackles the
significance of utilizing YouTube videos as a tool to develop EMJ students’
listening skils performance. Moreover, it is expected that the results of the study
may be useful for teachers and students. For teachers, they will interweave
Youtube videos more with their teaching listenings activities. Especially for
EMJ students who can take advantage of YouTube videos for their listening
skills.
Questions of the study
The study attempted to answer the following questions:
1. Why do most English majored students at Nha Trang university choose
Youtube to improve their listening skill?
2. How do they use Youtube for their listening skill?
3. What have they learned from listening to spoken English video on
Youtube?
The study aimes to investigate the effect of using YouTube videos on
listening skills of English majored students at Nha Trang university.
References:
Cakir, I.(2006). The use of video as an audio-visual material in foreign
Educational Technology, 5 (4): 67-73.
Gorjian, B. (2014). The effect of movie subtitling on incidental language
teaching classroom. The Turkish Online Journal of Asian Social Science, 4(9),
1013-1026.
Rokni, S. J. A., and Ataee, A. J. (2014). Movies in EFL classrooms: With or
without subtitles. The Dawn Journal, 3(1), 715-726.
Xiaoning, W. (2007). On the use of video clips in college English teaching.
Canadian Social Science, 3 (2), 84-86.