The effect of youtube comments on Iraqi EFL learners' listening comprehension

Abstract EN

The aim of this study is to indicate the effectiveness of comments in facilitating or increasing Iraqi learners' listening comprehension.

In this quantitative research, the sample includes 26 male has been selected from the fourth stage of the Department of English, College of Education for Human Sciences, University of Thi-Qar.

The participants attending the two sessions where two videos were used during the 2017-2018 academic year.

A quasi-experimental design was utilized in this study with an experimental group (n = 12) that watched two videos in YouTube and read relevant comments, in addition to a control group (n = 14) that watched alike videos without comments.

After both groups watched each video, they wrote summaries for the video's content, and only the experimental students answered to brief questionnaires examining their views of the video's comments.

T-tests reflected that the experimental group's summaries had meaningfully more, as well as more accurate.

The questionnaires' results revealed that learners had a positive attitude toward relevant video comments as being a listening help choice.

According to these results, YouTube comments may be a valuable tool to enrich listening comprehension.

On Pedagogical side, selecting short videos for listening, the relevance and meaningfulness of comments must be among the criteria of video's choice.