AUDIOVISUAL NEWS, CARTOONS, AND FILMS AS SOURCES OF AUTHENTIC LANGUAGE INPUT AND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ENHANCEMENT

ABSTRACT

In today’s audiovisually driven world, various audiovisual programs can be incorporated as authentic sources of potential language input for second language acquisition. In line with this view, the present research aimed at discovering the effectiveness of exposure to news, cartoons, and films as three different types of authentic audiovisual programs on improving the language proficiency of low level language learners. To this end, 60 low level language learners were selected based on a language proficiency test and were assigned into three groups as group one, two, and three randomly. During the study which lasted for 10 weeks, the first group of the participants had exposure to a sample selected audiovisual materials from news, the second group of the participants had exposure to a sample selected audiovisual materials from cartoons, and the third group of the participants had exposure to a sample selected audiovisual material from various films. At the end of the study, another sample language proficiency test was administered to all the three groups to find out which group could gain significant language proficiency improvement. The results of the post-test were indicative of the fact that group one (news) failed to improve its language proficiency. In contrast, groups two (cartoons) and three (films) could improve their language proficiency. More importantly, the cartoon group participants’ improvement was more significant than that of the film group. The results showed that audiovisual programs generally are a great source of language input for teaching purposes. However, more caution should be given to the selection of the type of audiovisual programs for low level proficiency learners. Cartoons and films with good story lines seem to motivate the learners to absorb the language