The Impact of Using Podcasts on Iranian Autonomous /Non-Autonomous EFL Learners Listening Comprehension Ability at Pre-Intermediate Level

The aim of the current study was to investigate whether Podcasts would havean effect on Iranian autonomous and non-autonomous EFL learners’listening comprehension ability at pre-intermediate level. For this purpose,60 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners at some Iranian institutesparticipated in the experiment of the study. Then they were divided into twogroups based on an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and an autonomyquestionnaire. The participants of each group were assigned randomly intotwo experimental groups (N=15) and two control groups (N=15). A pre-testwas administered to the four groups of the study and then, the experimentalgroups received 5 sessions of teaching podcast. After the treatment, a posttestof L2 listening comprehension was administered to all groups of the studyand finally the data were analyzed via a series of paired sample t-tests to seewhether there is progress between the pretest and posttest scores of thegroups, and a Two-way ANOVA was used to see the differences betweenposttests. The results revealed that Iranian autonomous and non-autonomousEFL learners’ listening comprehension ability got better after the treatment.

Keywords:

ability , autonomy , EFL learners , listening , podcast