The Effect of Content-Based Multimodal Instructive Animations on EFL Students’ Listening Skill: A Gender Study

Abstract

Inspired by the tenets of the scenario based instruction, the present study focused on the effect of content-based multimodal instructive animations on Iranian EFL students’ listening skill. The selected participants were 240 male and female elementary students, in the 8-11 age range. The experimental group members were assigned to two sub-groups: animation and ordinary. The sub-groups were exposed to instructive topic-based video clips in animation and ordinary forms, respectively. The control group, however, received only audio CD instruction. TOEFL Primary tests were administered as both pre- and post-tests. The results indicated that animation exposure group significantly outperformed the ordinary exposure group and the control group, and that ordinary exposure had more vigorous performance than the control group. Independent sample t-tests showed that gender had no significant effect on both animation and ordinary groups’ listening skill. The obtained results can provide a deeper pedagogical insight into the way we expose learners to English language listening skill.