Advancing Listening Comprehension Through Movies

Teaching listening comprehension is one of the most vital and difficult tasks for any foreign language teacher because there are no rules as in grammar teaching. This study explored to what extent students enhance listening comprehension through movies with and without subtitles and what their attitudes are towards this teaching tool. A total of 38 students taught in English language private school in Novi Sad in 2013 were tested in their listening abilities through pretest and posttest. The five-point Likert scale was employed in rating. Best students’ attitudes and the worst students’ attitudes toward this technique have been selected for interview after they completed the questionnaire. Finally interviews were used to elicit student's positive and negative opinions towards the technique. All these were conducted over one academic year, and the study showed that the students needed more time to learn and more advice. Clearly, using movies proved to be an effective way for students to improve their listening ability. A majority of them enhanced listening skills and gained more than vocabulary, understood more foreign culture, felt relaxed and had fun while learning in class.