Technology and Language Learning: Exposure to TV and Radio News and Speaking Proficiency
Taher Bahrani, Shu Sim Tam
Kritika Kultura No. 17

Main idea: Technology has been improving for decades already in audios or visuals such as television and radio. They are used to convey information through news networks, which can also be used pedagogically to improve language learning. Exposure to news coming from television and radios has a rather large contribution to language learning.

Evidences:

• An experiment had 200 third-year language learners take up a test and then those who scored one standard deviation above and below the mean are selected for the experiment. They were divided into two groups, each with 30 members. Group 1 participants were exposed to television and radio news while Group 2 participants were merely exposed to non-news programs. At the end of the time period, the students once again took up another sample speaking proficiency test and the results of the post-test showed how Group 1 excelled better than Group 2.
• In their research paper, the works of Brinton and Gaskill argued how using television and radio news utterances as teaching materials has proven effective on improving listening comprehension of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners having difficulty in dealing with comprehending news utterances (404).