"Listen and click": Enhancing Listening Comprehension Skills in the Language Classroom through the Use of Clickers

The following article relates to an experiment with a group of second year students learning an applied language as a minor subject of their degree. Personal Response Devices were introduced to improve the students’ listening skills by creating more engagement with the course material. It led to 100% participation in class activities run through clickers, facilitated the students in self-evaluating their performance at the tasks and was fun, despite some technical issues occasionally. The experiment fell short however on the reflective aspect. Students were either incapable of or unwilling to reflect on the questions they found difficult. The lecturer was left with improved performances in listening assignments, but no usable feedback on how to support her students in transferring those improved skills to the related area of speaking performance.