The Utilization of WBT Courseware for Improving Listening Skills in English Class

Abstract

One of the main aims of English education at high school is to develop students’ practical communication skills such as listening and speaking. However, it is difficult for one teacher to instruct every student individually in class. Therefore, in order to improve students’ English proficiency, especially in listening skills, we developed English WBT courseware, which includes lots of video and sound clips for self-practice. Through utilizing it with pair or group activities in the process of ‘Blended Learning’ in face-to-face classrooms, we have studied the effectiveness of the instruction with WBT. The results of the research show that the students’ level of the taxonomy of the cognitive domain toward ‘Communication’ was raised and that the listening ability of the students with low English proficiency was improved.