Webcasts for developing English listening skills among biology majors at the Faculty of education

Abstract EN

This research aimed to develop the English listening skills among Biology majors at the Faculty of Education.

The research design was one group pre and post-test quasi-experimental design.

The participants were 58 sophomores (2nd year) students of Biology department at Ismailia Faculty of Education in Suez Canal University.

To help them teach Biology in English successfully in their future career as Biology teachers at language schools, webcasts were prepared and oriented towards the participants' practice of the listening comprehension skills (Listening for Specifics, listening for Details and Interpreting Cause & Effect) as well as critical listening skills (Evaluating, Comparative Analysis and Inferring) within the context of Biology.

There were nine webcasts for listening comprehension and nine webcasts for critical listening.

Four tools were developed, validated and implemented by the researcher.

They were : 1) Needs Assessment Questionnaire, 2) Listening Comprehension Test, 3) Critical Listening Test and 4) Two Online Opinion Polls.

The findings revealed that webcasting, as a proposed pedagogy, had a high positive impact on the target English listening skills among sophomore Biology majors.