School of Languages at XJTLU Conference 2024

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the landscape of educational methodologies, starting a new era of interactive and personalized learning. Embracing this technological advance, the present research investigates the impact of AI-enhanced listening materials on advanced language learners' comprehensive listening skills across a range of English accents. It also aims to evaluate the correlation between their use of AI tools and their performance in oral summary tasks of their speaking coursework. Participants engage with AI-enhanced listening materials that present a range of English accents, facilitating active listening and note-taking to construct their oral summaries. After composing their written summaries, they submit them to AI platforms along with the provided prompt, which is tailored based on the content of the videos and includes the original video transcript. The AI platforms then provide personalised feedback to stimulate the development of their summarization skills. A mixed-methods approach is used to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data from LMO and Mediasite measures students’ engagement, such as the click number, the average listening duration for all students, and the individual listening durations for each video, along with students' scores from the Speaking Coursework. On the qualitative side, questionnaires are used to collect students' perceptions about the effect of this “AI-enhanced listening materials” project and, through semi-structured interviews, the study gathers deeper insights into the learners' perceptions, challenges faced, and the perceived effectiveness of the AI enhanced materials in aiding their comprehensive listening skills towards different accents and their oral summarization performance. The anticipated findings aim to contribute to the integration of AI tools in future language courses, shaping the role of technology in language acquisition and curriculum development.