42 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening

by Using English Movie Videos on YouTube

P-ISSN 2355-2794
E-ISSN 2461-0275
Tengku Maya Silviyanti*

Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, INDONESIA

Abstract
This study investigated students’ interest in using YouTube movie videos in
practicing their listening ability either inside or outside of class. This study
used a mix of open and closed questionnaires adopted from Kelsen (2009)
on the motivation of using YouTube for listening. 45 students enrolled in a
Listening III class were taken as the sample. The findings showed that the
highest motive for students to use it was because ‘using YouTube has been
beneficial to their English, followed by ‘using YouTube is interesting’, then,
‘using YouTube motivated them to study English’ and ‘the YouTube
material was relevant to what was studied in class”. The lowest motive
included ‘using YouTube in class motivated them to use it to themselves to
study English outside of classes. Furthermore, some students’ open
responses to YouTube were: they can practice their English by watching
native speakers; it has pictures so it is easy for students to understand the
topic, and the materials were relevant since they were practicing listening.
Yet, negative responses were also found such as they did not have internet
connection at home, were not motivated to do it alone and were not
assigned homework to use it. Thus, YouTube can be considered to be used
as a material in listening class because it is found to provide many benefits
for students.

Keywords: Students‟ perception, listening, YouTube, movie videos.

1. INTRODUCTION

Various studies have examined the use of multimedia in English language

education (Schmid, 2008; Wagner, 2007; Rammal, 2005). Multimedia is the use of
many kinds of media including text, sounds, and pictures (Beatty, 2003; Schmid, 2008).
One popular media in use today is the internet which makes it feasible for
communication as well as being an educational resource (Peterson, 1997, a place for
many people to interact, publish something, play and collaborate (Galien, 2010). Even

*
Corresponding author, email: [email protected]

https://doi.org/10.24815/siele.v1i1.1119
© Syiah Kuala University. All rights reserved.
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 43

though Chhabra (2012) doubts that the internet can provide authentic materials in the
English language for teaching, Schmid (2008, p. 1553) says that the internet can be “a
vehicle for promising applications in foreign language learning especially for the
memorization of vocabulary”.
For the last six years, students at the University of Syiah Kuala (Unsyiah) have
become familiar with the internet. Many students now have smart phones which enable
them to access the internet everywhere and anytime. In other words, they have the
internet on their hand.
At the English Language Department, students learn Listening skill in three
semesters for eight credit hours. Listening at this level is aimed at developing the
students‟ competence in the theories and practical skills for listening especially
listening to British and American pronunciation, sounds and talks.
In the classroom, I learnt that some of my students were good at basic listening.
Basic listening is usually listening about daily conversations at normal speed. However,
they sometimes had difficulties when they were listening to conversations with rapid
speech. Listening class only takes place once in a week. I found that this was not
enough for them to practice listening efficiently. Therefore, during the learning process,
they were often motivated to improve their listening skill by listening to English news,
songs, movies, and videos through various media such as television, radio, tape, and
YouTube. They were able to do this practice at home, alone or with peers. Besides, they
were often asked to watch and listen to conversations in movies. For example, they
were assigned to write a summary based on a speech by John Foppy on YouTube. In
another occasion, they were asked to write down phrases that they heard in some
popular movies such as Titanic, Cellular, and many others.
I found that they were quite motivated to have listening practice from authentic
materials such as YouTube. They did the tasks I assigned enthusiastically. However,
there was no evidence of their opinions towards the use of YouTube. Also there was no
evidence as to whether they are motivated to enhance their listening ability by listening
to YouTube videos should they be assigned to do so. Therefore, to answer these
questions, a research question was developed: “What are the students‟ opinions about
learning listening by using YouTube?”
This study, therefore, is aimed at investigating students‟ interest and perceptions
towards the use of YouTube to improve their listening skills. The findings can also be
compared with their interest on the conventional activities in listening class which was
by using a tape. Despite there being a number of studies on the use of YouTube in the
language classroom, however, no study has been conducted in the Acehnese classroom
context at Unsyiah. This study, therefore, is intended to fill in this gap.

2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Listening Skills

According to Vandergrift (1999, p. 168), listening is ”a complex, active process in

which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and
grammatical structure, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of
the above, and interpret it within the immediate as well as the larger socio cultural
context of the utterance”. While to Green (2004), listening involves students‟ awareness
44 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

of the topic being spoken and they will be able to recall listening materials when they
are not under pressure of the listening demand. Listening is also an important language
skill which learners are required to master because other skills can be associated to
listening as well (Sejdiu, 2013).

2.2 Materials Used in Listening Skills

The term material has been shifted from „what the teachers use‟ to many other
definitions, depending on the goals and the skills. Such definitions have been described
by Graves (2000, p. 150) who says that “material development means creating,
choosing or adapting, and organizing materials and activities so that students can
achieve the objective that will help them reach the goal in the course”. While
Tomlinson (2012) says that:

Materials for language learning‟ will be taken to be anything that can be used to
facilitate the learning of a language, including course books, videos, graded
readers, flash cards, games, website and mobile phone interactions, though,
inevitably, much of the literature focuses on printed materials. Materials can be
informative (informing the learners about the target language), instructional
(guiding the learners in practicing the language), experiential (providing the
learners with experience of the language in use, eliciting (encouraging the
learners to use the language) and exploratory (helping the learners to make
discoveries about the language. (Tomlinson, 2012, p. 143)

For listening class, CD, VCD, or videos can be used (Arono, 2014) or are
commonly used in the form of off line mode.
Along with the development of the information and communication technology,
listening is no longer taking place in monotonous activities. Listening becomes more
integrated and teaching listening becomes more challenging. It is not a passive activity
but it requires students‟ attention and ability to comprehend the materials. And those
„old fashioned‟ media (CDs, VCDs) are not used anymore, at least in developing
countries or cities. This means that CD and VCD players are no longer found as L2
media. Teachers have looked into new outstanding media or materials in which they can
be used or opened in portable tools. The internet (as briefly discussed in the
introduction) has taken place in L2, and YouTube is one of the interactive videos
mounted on the web.

2.3 Using Movie Video Movies on YouTube for Language Skill

Movie video is one of the media which can be used in language learning.
YouTube with its official address www.youtube.com, is a popular site which allows
people to upload a video, watch it, and comment on it. Based on the statistical report on
its official website (http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/id/statistics.html), it has more
than one billion visitors every month. Furthermore, it is available in 61 countries in 61
languages, and also available on smart phones. Therefore, thousands of videos with
thousands of topics in many languages are available on YouTube. For movies, people
can just easily type some key words and related movie videos will appear. There are
also a lot of these videos made for educational purposes. With these videos, creative
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 45

teachers can choose and can lead students to meaningful activities involving one or the
four English skills. Examples of activities may range from conversation activities,
„movie trailer‟, „voiceover‟, to „famous movie screen re-enactments‟ which can be used
for listening and speaking activities (Watkins and Wilkins, 2011, p.115). In addition,
Kreisen (2009) states that:

YouTube, as mentioned, is a readily available source of authentic pop culture

material. Encouraging students to interact in an educational capacity with popular
culture through English language. YouTube clips may act as a motivating factor
for students wishing to further develop their language skills as they endeavour to
gain a deeper understanding of content they willingly access online. Moreover, it
is also available for students to engage in outside of class in some form of
student-centered learning. (Kreisen, 2009, p. 3)

Kreisen (2009) points out that the universality of YouTube has enabled students
to know other cultures since the videos are uploaded by many people around the world.
Besides, it gives motivation in L2. It also allows students to do video-sharing which can
give positive outputs for learning (Snelson & Perkins, 2009), and language learning can
take place in a meaningful environment (Alhamami, 2013). Videos that are uploaded
can interest students to pay attention not only to the picture but also to the nonverbal
gestures and intonation which makes the video full of richness (Stempleski, 2002).
Teaching listening by using video is now a common thing since video has audio plus
visual which enable students to participate in both (Wagner, 2007). These audio and
visual characteristics make it easy for students to recall the material (Kozma, 1991).
Furthermore, “the use of video allows listeners to utilize the non-verbal
components of communication that can assist them in processing and comprehending
aural input” (Wagner, 2007, p.67) as well as providing “authentic language input”
(Cakir, 2006, p. 67) because students are exposed to the real contexts, real people as
well as real situations (Moobin, 2008). Thus, YouTube is the leading movie video
website that exists today.

2.4 The Implications of Using Video in Language Learning

Cakir (2006, pp. 69-70) lists several ways of using video for language learning
which can increase students‟ motivation especially for learning the four skills: (1) active
viewing, as it will increase students‟ participation to understand the ideas in the movie,
(2) freeze framing and prediction (where the teacher can pause the video and draw
students‟ attention by asking some questions or discuss a particular scene), (3) silent
viewing (sound off), (4) sound on and vision off, (4) repetition and role play, (5)
reproduction activity (an activity in which students are required to be able to recall what
was spoken), (6) dubbing activity, and (7) follow up activities.
A study was conducted by Arono (2014) with 89 students in an experimental
group who were taught by using interactive media and 126 students in a control group
who were taught using audio learning media. The results showed that the students
taught with interactive multimedia improved their critical listening skills more than
those in the control group. A study on proficiency and motivation by Lamb (2004) with
219 first year students in Indonesia revealed that even though the students had had
contacts with English in their environment e.g. magazines, books, TV, music, etc., the
46 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

students‟ proficiency was still low. This study also noted that only a few students were
motivated to practice their L2 at home with their own initiative whilst others would do
that just because they were assigned homework.
In relation to YouTube, a study conducted by Kelsen (2009) towards EFL
students in Taiwan resulted in the students‟ opinions of its use, using ratings for
YouTube as (1) interesting, (2) relevant, (3) beneficial, (4) less motivating in the
classroom, and (5) less motivating outside the classroom. This study showed that even
though students felt positive about using YouTube in enhancing their English, they
were less motivated to use YouTube outside of their class.

4. METHODOLOGY

4.1 Research Subject

This study aims to find out students‟ interest in using YouTube for their listening
course. The study took place at the English Language Department of the University of
Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh Indonesia. There were two listening classes (Class C and D).
There were 23 students in Class C and 22 students in class D, making a total of 45
respondents. All of the respondents had already finished two levels of listening classes;
Listening I and Listening II. Listening III, in which they were enrolled, was the last
level of Listening class in their course of study.

4.2 The Instrument

This study uses a questionnaire (see Appendix 1) to investigate the students‟

interest in listening to English movie videos on YouTube. The students were given the
questionnaire about their attitude to using YouTube. There were 10 questions.
Questions 1 to 3 were closed-ended which asked about each student‟s personal data
where they had to put ticks in boxes. The first question asked about the respondents‟
personal details on: (1) gender, and (2) age, followed by (3) a yes/no question about
their getting access to YouTube and to the internet. The next question (4) asked about
the students‟ frequency of looking at videos on YouTube. Question five asked about
their purpose of using YouTube. This was an open question.
Items 6- 10 were in the form of Likert-Scale questions; with 5 options: (1)
strongly disagree, (2) disagree, (3) neutral, (4) agree, and (5) strongly agree. This used
mix closed and open form which required students to write their reasons. The reasons
were important to know the better picture of what they felt about YouTube. This study
adopted the questionnaire from Kelsen (2009) with some modifications to adjust to the
condition of the students in the study. For instance, all of the preference (strongly
disagree, disagree, etc.) were written out to avoid students‟ misunderstanding on the
degree of preference. Details of the questions are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Questionnaire items (Kelsen, 2009).

No. of items Statements Note
1 Gender and age
2 Do you have access to a computer with high-speed connection outside of
class?
3 Have you used YouTube before?
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 47

Table 1 continued…
4 How often do you use YouTube outside of class?
5 When do you use YouTube on your own, what do you usually use it for?
6 Using YouTube materials made class more interesting.
7 The YouTube material used was relevant to what was studied in class.
Reason:

8 Using YouTube in class has been beneficial to your English.

Reason:

9 Using YouTube motivated you to study English.

Reason:

10 Using YouTube in class motivated you to use it yourself to study English

outside of class.
Reason:

5. FINDINGS

5.1 Results from the Questionnaire

Of the 45 respondents, 11 were male students and 34 were female students with
ages ranging from 19 to 21 years old. This shows that the sample was dominated by
female students. 73% of students said that they can access the Internet with high-speed
connection, while only 27% of them could not get hold of Internet with high-speed
connection. This means that a majority of the respondents could open YouTube. Along
with the developments in information and communication technology in Aceh, many
providers are now providing internet service with quite cheap prices. Many students
bought internet packages for their mobile phones or android tablets and „surfing‟ was
no longer regarded as an expensive thing to do.
The third questions asked about whether or not they had ever used YouTube
before. All students (100%) said „Yes‟. This was also based on their learning
experiences in previous listening classes. They had been assigned to listen to movie
videos in English language and were asked to recall the story. Hence, they had already
experienced surfing on YouTube.
Next, the fourth question was about the frequency of YouTube use outside of
class. 47% of the students (21 of them) said that they sometimes used YouTube outside
of class, while 29%, say 13, and 13%, say 6, of the students said that they often and
very often used YouTube outside of class. 4 of them (9%) rarely used YouTube and
only 1 student, 2%. said that he/she had never used YouTube outside of class Since
YouTube is considered very entertaining, this could be one of the reasons why this site
was very popular amongst the students.
The fifth question inquired the reason for using YouTube. This is shown in
Figure 1.
48 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

Figure 1. Item no 5.

For many students, entertainment (watching video clips of artists, films, funny
videos) became the highest popular reason for them to access YouTube, followed by
studying English and educational purposes. Some students specified that the other
reasons were for watching sport, such as soccer matches and boxing.
The next question asked the students‟ opinion if using YouTube materials made
class more interesting. This is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Item no. 6.

Figure 2 shows that no one disagreed that using YouTube was interesting. 16% of
the students felt neutral about it whilst a majority of students, 34 in all or 76% agreed
that using YouTube made class more interesting. Of the two topics that were assigned
to the students, they felt most enthusiastic about John Foppy. They were surprised to
see that he did not have arms but he was able to do everything from driving to giving a
speech. The language used was quite hard for most students to understand but since
they could see the moving pictures, they got the point of what was being told. This is in
line with the explanation by Kozma (1991) that the characteristics of audio and visual
of a video can make it easy for students to understand and recall the material.
Next, students were asked if the YouTube material assigned to them was relevant
to what was studied in class. This is shown in Figure 3.
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 49

Figure 3. Item no. 7.

A number of 73% of students (33 of them) agreed with this. However there were
9 students (20%) who were unsure about this, while only 3 or 7% of students disagreed
that the material was relevant to what was being studied. From the experience, when
they were assigned to watch the speech of Mariana Pascal entitled “Malaysian English:
standard or local English”, the students were happy that the topic interested them and
they were laughing during the video. This topic was relevant to them because
Indonesian English also has its own interesting characteristics just like Malaysian
English; it is a topic that they could relate to. The other reason was that they were
enrolled in a Listening class, so appropriate topics presented in English can be sources
to practice their listening.
The eighth question asked about whether or not using YouTube had been
beneficial to their English (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Item no. 8.

Amazingly, 87% of students agreed with this item while the remaining 13% chose
„strongly agree‟ with this item. The richness of movie videos that are available on
YouTube made students realize that they could learn from many native speakers‟
speech, talk, songs and stories, and further study their intonations and accents. This
would enhance their English as well as motivate them to use YouTube in the classroom.
The ninth question asked about whether or not using YouTube in class motivated
them to study English. This is shown in Figure 5.
50 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

Figure 5. Item no. 9.

From Figure 5, 34 students chose „agree‟ with this item. They were motivated to
learn English in class when the teacher assigned them to YouTube materials. 4 students
chose „strongly agree‟, while 6 students had doubts. Only 1 student disagreed that
she/he was motivated to learn English from YouTube material.
The last question, question 10, asked their opinion about whether or not using
YouTube in class motivated them to study English outside. This is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 6. Item no. 10.

Only 18 (40%) and 2 (4%) of the respondents were motivated or strongly

motivated to enhance their English language by using YouTube at home. 9 (20%) of
students were not sure if they were motivated. Surprisingly, 1 (2%) chose to „strongly
disagree‟ and 15 (33%) disagreed that they were motivated. This, therefore, raised the
question of why they were not motivated to practice their English by using YouTube at
home. From the students‟ responses (see sub-heading 5.2), it was clear that some said
they were not assigned homework by the teacher. This made them reluctant to do so,
even for their own sake. Besides, limited internet connection was also among the
reasons found for not using YouTube.
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 51

5.2 Students’ Responses to Using YouTube

This section presents the students‟ responses. It is divided into two parts. The first
part deals with the mean score from questions numbers 6 to10 in the questionnaire,
which shows the students‟ motives from the highest to the lowest ones. The second part
deals with the students written responses obtained from the open questions in the
questionnaire.

5.2.1 The Mean Score for Students’ Answers for Item Numbers 6 to 10

In this section, the mean score of questionnaire results is presented in Table 2.

This aims to give a better picture of the highest and lowest motives for students to use
You Tube.

Table 2. Mean score.

No. of items Statements Mean
6 Using YouTube materials made class more interesting. 3.93
7 The YouTube material used was relevant to what was studied in class. 3.67
8 Using YouTube in class has been beneficial to your English. 4.1
9 Using YouTube motivated you to study English. 3.91
10 Using YouTube in class motivated you to use it yourself to study English 3.11
outside of class.

From Table 2, it is clear that the highest motive for students to use YouTube was
that using YouTube in class has been beneficial to their English (item no. 8). Since
they were enrolled in a Listening class, they felt that many movies presented in English
could be used to enhance their listening skills. The next motive was that using YouTube
materials made class more interesting (item no. 6), followed by using YouTube
motivated them to study English (item no. 9), and using YouTube was relevant to what
was studied in class (item no. 7). As noted in the literature, several implications of using
videos have been discussed (See Sub heading 2.2. When students wanted to understand
the topic better, they could repeat the video easily and the visual pictures help their
comprehension; they would be unable to do this if they just listened to taped materials.
When I assigned them to watch the speech by Mariana Pascal, one tried her best to
understand the topic as she saw other students were laughing watching the video. The
clear pronunciation of Mariana Pascal made them easy to recall the story in the follow
up activities.
Next, it was found that the lowest motive for them was related to item no. 10. It
had the lowest mean (M=3.11). Therefore, this shows that they were not really
motivated to use YouTube outside of the class for their own sake. Comparing these
results with Kelsen‟s, the difference lies on the finding that Kelsen‟s respondents found
“YouTube is interesting” to be the main factor, while this study found that “using
YouTube is beneficial to their English” to be the main factor reported by the students.
However, both studies found that students rated item no. 5 for motivation in using
YouTube outside class to be the lowest motive. This is in line with Lamb (2004), who
found that only a few students were motivated to practice their L2 at home on their own
initiative whilst others only did that just because they were assigned homework.
52 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

5.2.2 Students’ Written Responses to Using YouTube for Items Numbers 6 to10

Students‟ responses were obtained from the answers that they wrote directly on
the questionnaire. The students were required to write clear and honest reasons for
items nos. 6 to 10. The findings below are not written in rank but chronologically from
items nos. 6 to 10.
For item no. 6, most students believed that using YouTube in the listening class
was very interesting (M=3.93). This is the second higher motive for them. Some
excerpts are presented with the grammatical errors left in to show their actual written
answers. Their reasons (referred to as “R” in the excerpts) are as follows:

(R1) Yes, it is interesting. You know, we can watch the movement of their mouth when
they are speaking. So we learn the better pronunciation. (S17)
(R2) Because it is different from usual class. (S30)
(R3) Because there is a picture when we listen. Interesting. (S10)
(R4) Interesting. We can see the native speaker talking. (S41)

From the excerpts, we can learn that students found it easy and interesting when
they practiced listening with You Tube movie videos because at the same time, they
could watch the picture. When they did not understand the topic being spoken, they
could connect it to the picture and this did help them a lot. As explained by S17 (R1),
he tried to learn the pronunciation by looking at the mouth of the speaker. As explained
by Tomlinson (2012), this kind of material can be one of eliciting materials which can
encourage students to use the target language as well as instructional materials which
can guide students to practice the language.
Next, item no. 7 asked the students‟ opinion about whether the material in
YouTube was relevant or not to what was studied in class (M=3.67). Some reasons are:

(R5) Because I have ever watched in YouTube about motivational John Foppy video in
class, that was very interesting and could motivate me because of his story. Not
only that I also can improve my listening skill through that one. (S05)
(R6) Because the material make us learn and practice more how to get the information
by listening. (S02)
(R7) Because many materials we studied in class are available in YouTube. (S15)
(R8) It is relevant, of course. Because we studied listening and we listen on YouTube,
so it is relevant as long as we listen English language. (S32)

The excerpts above provided the students‟ reasons on why using YouTube was
relevant. Since our class was a listening class and as long as they listened to English, it
was relevant even though the video was not specifically constructed for educational
purposes. John Foppy, for example, was a video with rapid speech. I observed that
some of them had difficulties to follow and understand John Foppy‟s speech. However,
there was a narrator in the video and he spoke at normal speed. This made the students
understand the topic. However, there were also a few negative reasons, such as:

(R9) Some students’ attention will be on video/ pictures, so they can’t focus on their
listening. (S11)
(R10) Not all video relevant. The recorder just want to be exist. (S13)
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 53

Yet, even though there were negative comments, the class worked well and they
participated in class well.
Item no. 8 asked their opinions on whether using YouTube had been beneficial to
their English or not. 87% of students agreed to this. This was the highest motive for
them. Some reasons are:

(R11) Yes it is beneficial. Because it is one of the ways to learn English especially in
listening ability and pronunciation. (S41)
(R12) Because we can see on YouTube how cool the way they speak, isn’t it? That
make me feel want to speak like them all. (S1)
(R13) Because when we use YouTube, we can hear the native speaker speaks more
clearly with the picture, so we can improve our listening skill. (S6).

And a negative response was:

(R14) There are some videos which improve my English, but the other videos cannot
do that. Because the speaker this video talked too fast, so I can’t understand to
what the speaker said. (S39)

Referring to item no. 9, quite a lot of them agreed that using YouTube motivated
them to study English (M=3.91)). This is the fourth motive for them. Some excerpts are
as follow:

(R15) We can share (discuss) the meaning with others. We can get motivation from
this. (S43)
(R16) Because it is very good and fun to learn in class. (S4)
(R17) Because by YouTube we can see many interesting things than just focusing in
textbook or cassette. (S9)
A negative response was:

(R18) It depends on the video and students can be motivated or not. (S20)

The last item, item no. 10, was found to have the lowest motive for them to use
YouTube (M=3.11). It was about whether or not using YouTube in class motivated
them to use it by themselves to study English outside of class. Interestingly, only 44%
of students were motivated to use YouTube to improve their listening skill at home.
There were many students (33%) that were not interested to do so. Some reasons are:

(R19) Because if outside class, I don’t have facility to connect internet. (S3)
(R20) I don’t have much time to using YouTube, and sometimes it’s difficult to
connect it. (S7)
(R21) Because often disconnect and teacher rarely give us assignment to see YouTube
at home. (S11)
(R22) Only using YouTube when we need or if there is homework. (S23)
(R23) No, I have connection internet at home, but the connection so bad. It’s make me
lazy to wait buffering the video. (S45).
(R24) I am not motivated to do it alone. (S30)
54 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

Positive responses were:

(R25) Because even we watch YouTube not for studying English, I accidentally learn
English. But it depends on what I watch. When you listen to songs, I can get
some vocabulary. I usually learn this way. (S36)

From the excerpts, it is clear why item no. 10 was the lowest motive for the
students. Technical problems were mostly found such as no internet connection or
limited access to the internet. Even though students could buy internet packages in quite
cheap or reasonable prices, they still had to make additional payments if they wanted to
open YouTube or streaming line. This is usually uncovered in the internet packages.
Therefore, they did not want to spend money for this. There were also reasons that they
would use YouTube whenever they were assigned homework. They would do this
because they had to submit the assignment.

6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSSION

The use of video has enabled the students to learn from various interesting videos
that are uploaded by many people around the world. In this section, the discussion is
presented together with the conclusions.

6.1 Discussion

The use of YouTube appeared to be interesting and beneficial for students in a

listening class. The use of YouTube and students‟ interest had major impacts on their
English language learning. They seemed to be very enthusiastic and eager to watch a
movie video, then practiced to pronounce words and to speak like the native speakers.
Even though the internet connection was sometimes down, but it did not reduce their
interest in watching and gaining knowledge from the videos.
However, the weak point appeared when students had to watch and listen to
speakers who spoke English very fast. This made their untrained ears to sometimes
almost give up in trying to follow the ideas. To overcome this problem, they had to
work in pairs to help each other understand the material better because this allowed
them to share ideas with each other. This finding is also a reminder for us teachers to do
a more thorough pre-observation of the videos that will be used in the classroom. This
should include the selection of level of language difficulty used in the video, the accents
used, and the topic. They should gradually range from easy to medium and then to
difficult ones. So the students will be accustomed to listening to real native speakers in
a step by step process.
Another weak point was that the internet connection was sometimes slow or
interrupted. Videos stopped whilst being played. This sometimes wasted our time
because we had to wait and then play them again. To overcome this problem, our
university should have a higher speed internet with larger band width to make it easier
for the students to use the latest technology in English language learning. As teachers,
we can usually use our own modems as an alternative in the classroom. When the
wireless internet in campus became too difficult to use, we connected to the internet by
using our own modems. The other alternative is to download the videos from YouTube
 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 55

before using them in class. Therefore, during class, there is no need to open videos
directly from YouTube. Even though this can reduce the students‟ opportunity to find
related videos and read comments, but at least the goal of the listening class from
authentic YouTube materials is achieved through the downloaded videos.

6.2 Conclusion

The main purpose of the study was to investigate students‟ interest to practice
listening skills by using YouTube movie videos. The findings revealed that students
agree that using YouTube in class is beneficial to their English, interesting, relevant to
what was being studied in class, and motivated them in class, but less motivated to use
it outside of class. Students were found to be more enthusiastic when they learnt
listening skills by using the audio visual materials. Some reasons regarding this were
obtained from their written answers such as using YouTube made the class interesting
because they could see the native speakers talking, they were motivated to use the
materials assigned in the classroom and they could practice the way the native speakers
spoke. However, there were also negative reasons for using You Tube outside of class,
such reasons were due to not having fast internet at home and they were not assigned
homework to use it at home.
Nonetheless, there are some limitations to this study. It only reported the students‟
interest toward listening practice by using movie videos on YouTube. The research did
not cover the activities that happened in the classroom such as the process of
negotiation and collaborative work. Furthermore, the students‟ achievement on whether
their listening improved after using YouTube movie videos were also not investigated.
Therefore, it is suggested that other researchers who are also interested in educational
technology to conduct further in depth research on these matters.

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 T. M. Silviyanti, Looking into EFL Students’ Perceptions in Listening by Using English Movie Videos on
YouTube | 57

APPENDIX 1

YouTube Questionnaire

This questionnaire is for research purposes only. All data will be aggregated and will not be used to
evaluate you, your grade, or your teacher.

1 □ Male □ Female Age: _________

2 Do you have access to a computer with a high-speed connection outside of class?

□ Yes □ No

3 Have you used YouTube before?

□ Yes □ No

4 How often do you use YouTube outside of class?

□ Sometimes □ Often □ Very often □ Never

5 When you use YouTube on your own, what do you usually use it for? (You may choose more than
one answer)
□ Entertainment □ Education □ Studying □ Others,
English (please specify)

6 Using YouTube material made class more interesting.

□ Strongly □ Disagree □ Neutral □ Agree □ Strongly
disagree Agree

7 The YouTube material used was relevant to what was studied in class.
□ Strongly □ Disagree □ Neutral □ Agree □ Strongly
disagree Agree
Please state why or why not?

8 Using YouTube in class has been beneficial to your English?

□ Strongly □ Disagree □ Neutral □ Agree □ Strongly
disagree agree
Please state why or why not?

9 Using YouTube in class motivated to study English.

□ Strongly □ Disagree □ Neutral □ Agree □ Strongly
disagree agree
Please state why or why not?

10 Using YouTube in class motivated you to use it to yourself to study English outside of class?
□ Strongly □ Disagree □ Neutral □ Agree □ Strongly agree
disagree
Please state why or why not?

Thank you very much for taking the time to fill out this survey.

[Received 11 January 2013; revised 05 March 2014; accepted 16 March 2014]

58 | STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, 1(1), 42-58, 2014

THE AUTHOR

Tengku Maya Silviyanti received her Bachelor of Education from Universitas Syiah
Kuala in 2003. In 2008, she received her Masters of Arts in educational technology and
TESOL from University of Manchester. She is currently a lecturer at the Study Program
of English Language Education, Syiah Kuala University. She also teaches TOEFL
courses to students, teachers, and lecturers at the Language Center, Syiah Kuala
University. Her research interests are in the field of technology and how it is embedded
into the L2 classroom.