The Effect of YouTube on Speaking and Listening Skills of Students

Abstract

In an English as Foreign Language context like Saudi Arabia, university business
students face a difficult challenge to speak in English and to understand what is
spoken. The students don’t have the opportunity in their daily life to listen to
native speakers in or outside the classroom, but they are expected to listen to the
text book audios in the classes spoken by the native speakers of English.
Therefore, the difficulty rises in Listening and Speaking Skills Course as the
students are not exposed to the British accent. In order to solve this problem, the
researcher used YouTube videos spoken by the native speakers in the experimental
group, and the control group just had the normal practice of listening to only the
textbook audios. The researcher adopted quasi-experimental design with pretest
and posttest in both control and experimental groups and analyzed the
performance of the students using SPSS and Excel. The study proved that the
results of experimental group improved significantly in their listening
comprehension skills and performed better in their presentations than the control
group. In the English as Foreign Language contexts, where business students fail
to have exposure to the native accent of English, YouTube videos can make a
great contribution in improving their listening and speaking skills.