Teaching Listening Comprehension With Movies: As a Bridge Between TOEIC and Liberal Arts Education

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to discover an effective teaching method of listening comprehension. Assigned to teach Listening classes in the Liberal Arts Curriculum, the authors set a goal; to improve students' listening comprehension using the TOEIC listening test, without disregarding teaching English as a liberal art. The listening class was designed based on two theories: Schema Theory in the field of Applied Linguistics and Communication Theory called Dramatism. Phonetic obstacles in listening comprehension have been investigated in several studies; however, in light of the TOEIC listening test, other obstacles can be found due to students' lack of experiences in certain contexts, such as business and travel settings. In the case of phonetic obstacles, students need to learn terms and phonetic components. In the latter case, the challenge is to teach students contextual knowledge, how to activate the knowledge as schema, and how to infer the content as they listen to the material. Movies are an effective medium that allows students to engage in learning phonetic components while obtaining contextual knowledge easily. The current paper explains the listening class design and TOEIC listening activities with movies, as well as listening activities designed by students.