Mobile training as a means to improve future English teachers’ listening comprehension skills

Abstract

For English teachers listening fluency is a fundamental competency for their professional development. Listening is one of the most complicated and problematic aspects of learning English, as it leads to high mental strain. The objective of the research is to study mobile learning as a means to improve listening comprehension skills of the future English teachers. The tasks of the research are as follows: to identify and work out the theoretical framework for mobile applications use and their role in teaching English; to present the pilot study of the role of mobile learning in students’ autonomous work, in particular for listening comprehension skills improvement. The following methods were used: theoretical (theoretical-and-methodological analysis, classification and systematization of scientific sources, comparison and generalization of the theoretical and experimental research data), empirical (observation, testing), data processing methods (generalization and systematization of qualitative and quantitative results of the empirical research); methods of mathematical statistics (evaluation of experimental data by the arithmetic mean calculation). Upon the theoretical analysis results, the categories of mobile applications and their role in teaching English were identified. The survey showed that the students use mobile learning insufficiently and ineffectively. The research on the use of mobile learning as a means to improve the future English teachers’ listening comprehension skills was conducted. This required selection of several mobile applications (Duolingo, LinguaLeo, Learning English with New York Times, Polyglot 16 EnglishPod - Learn English, Bussu), the main selection criterion being the availability of tasks and texts for listening. The results of the term listening comprehension test showed that the students of the experimental groups who studied using mobile learning scored higher than those of the control groups, which proved relevance and effectiveness of mobile learning use as a means to improve the future teachers’ of the English language listening comprehension skills.