The Audiolingual Method in the development of listening comprehension skills of English learners

Abstract

The goal of learning a foreign language, such as English, is communication. Learners need to develop their input skills first to be able to produce the language to communicate information. In this way, listening comprehension skills are vital in a foreign language learning. This research project was carried out to determine the benefit of the audiolingual method in the development of listening comprehension skills. There were 69 participants in this research. 58 of them were students of English coursing level A2 divided equally into two groups, the control group and the experimental group. The experimental group was exposed to the application of the audiolingual method to develop listening comprehension skills whereas the control group continued with the regular method. In addition, a survey was applied to evaluate the acceptance of the proposal of a booklet with activities based on the mentioned method which was applied to 11 A2 teachers and the 58 students. The academic performance analysis of the scores obtained by the study subjects of the experimental and control groups in the diagnostic test, midterm exam and final exam showed that there are improvements in both cases. However, the experimental group exceeded by 1.6 points to the control group in average scores of the final exam which demonstrates the benefit of the method.