Didactic audiovisual resources and Listening comprehension

It is well known that the ability of listening is as important if not more important than speaking, because an effective communication requires both components to work harmoniously. Since one does not work without the other, speaking has no merit if what we say is not received by another person. The central objective of this study is to improve listening comprehension through the use of didactic audiovisual resources such as music videos and audiobooks. This study employed a mixed action research approach to collect both quantitative and qualitative data with high school students of a public institution in Loja. The instruments used were a pre-test, a post-test and field notes, and the data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. A descriptive analysis was used to interpret the results of the pre-test and post-test, as well as a thematic analysis to interpret the information collected through the field notes. Through this, after the implementation of the audiovisual resources, there was an outstanding increase in the students' listening comprehension, which went from 57% to 82%. Similarly, the results indicated that the students experienced more motivation, participation and improved their listening sub-skills such as, listening for predicting, listening for gist and listening for specific information with the use of audiovisual resources.