DESIGNING AND PRODUCING MULTIMEDIA LEARNING PROTOTYPE TO ENHANCE UNIVERSITY STUDENT’S RECEPTIVE SKILLS

With regard to material development, Kitao (1997) asserts that among the five important components in language instruction, which are students, a teacher, materials, teaching method and evaluation, learning materials indeed play an important role. In many cases, teachers and students rely heavily on learning materials which most of the time are in the form of textbooks, for they determine the content, methods, and procedures of learning. However, some students find materials in textbooks uninteresting and tedious because the contents are not useful, meaningful and interesting for them (Kitao, 1997). Thus, besides textbooks, there should be a variety of materials available to students and teachers, such as in the form of video and audio tapes, computer software, and visual aids.
In response to this phenomena above, this study examines the processes involved in developing multimedia learning materials for receptive skills that is called Integrated Listening-Reading Multimedia Activities (henceforth will be called ILRMA). This is designed mainly for the context of Indonesian university students. It is intended for individual learning enhancement as well as supplementary materials in classrooms. The study employed qualitative study with descriptive procedure involving first year students of Telkom Institute of Technology. The instruments used were questionnaire for needs analysis and library research.
The learning materials for listening skills learning materials were developed based on the six types of listening performance provided by Brown (2004), Lund’s six listener functions (Hadley, 2001), and nine listening responses developed by Richards (2005) and modified by Lund (Hadley, 2001). Meanwhile, for reading skills the learning materials were developed based on Nunan’s (1999) five steps in designing reading course, and Barrett’s (1968) taxonomy. The courseware was designed by referring to Plass’ model of interface design (1998), Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning (2003), and Dickinson’s design features for self-instructional materials.
It was found that, in the area of listening the skills that need to be enhanced include literal recognition (for example, making summary) and making inference. On the other hand, inference and analysis are the area for reading skills. Furthermore, aside from the exhaustive processes, the design and production of the multimedia learning materials for receptive skills requires a well plan and involves several people. They are a material developer for developing the learning materials, a software engineer for transforming the learning materials into prototype software, an illustrator for drawing images, and a technician for recording audio. In addition, it requires a well plan and immense amount of budget.
To complete the cycle of the study, it is suggested that an effectiveness study is conducted to evaluate the Integrated Listening-Reading Multimedia Activities.

Keywords: receptive skills, multimedia, learning materials

1. Introduction
All universities in Indonesia, including Institut Teknologi Telkom (henceforth, will be referred to IT Telkom), assign their freshmen to take English as compulsory subject. Particularly in IT Telkom, the English subject is intended to enhance the freshmen’s receptive skills, listening and reading. This is due to the fact that strong receptive skills will provide a lot of advantages for the students to enhance their productive skills which cover speaking and writing.

In terms of learning second or foreign language, one would think that reading, writing, speaking, and listening happen at the same time. As a matter of fact, learning a second or foreign language is not that different from learning the first. Listening precedes speaking, and reading precedes writing. Listening and reading are both receptive skills whereas students are passively receiving and processing information. Hence, listening and reading skills play a key role in the acquisition process.

Many studies have been conducted to explore and investigate the role of listening and reading in learning second and foreign language. The results strengthened the view that comprehension-based activities along with communicative oriented ones facilitate second language acquisition. After all, it is more than apparent that input plays a crucial role in second language acquisition.

With the advancement of multimedia technology, there are numerous learning materials designed and developed for enhancing student’s receptive skills. Indeed, regarding language learning, it has been well noted that there are advantages of using computer based multimedia. Among them are that computers can be programmed to allow users to control both the conditions of viewing and what is viewed (Frommer, 1998 in Hadley, 2001:212) and that it offers interactive learning (Frommer, 1998 in Hadley, 2001:163). The possibility of controlling the conditions of viewing and what is viewed enable a material developer to adapt the information and tasks with the students’ competency level and address their individual interests. Meanwhile, the interactive learning results in the improvement of sensory stimulation (Hoogeven, 1995 in Munir 2002).

Although there are many educational software in the form of CD-ROM and Internet web sites available, Meziane asserts that most software developments were mostly related to business or games-oriented applications (Mukti and Hwa, 2004). As a computer plays as a mediator (Hoven, 1997, 1999), what determines the effectiveness in one’s learning is the pedagogically content embedded in the multimedia software package.

Noting the facts above, this study is designed to develop learning materials and activities to enhance students’ listening and reading skills in the form of prototype software. As Wilbur (2004) stated that to justify the use of multimedia in enhancing learning and allow learning to gain deeper understanding of the instructional materials, the materials should be properly designed.

Thus, this study attempts to explore processes involved in the preparation and the production of listening and reading materials in the prototype software. It is intended that the prototype software developed in this study will be beneficial for IT Telkom’s freshmen to enhance their listening and reading skills, English lecturers to assist them in implementing the new perspective in TEFL, and material developers to further develop multimedia learning materials intended for classroom use as well as individual use.

2. Theoretical Foundation
2.1 Principles in Developing Materials for Receptive Skills in EFL Context
Brown (1995:139) defines materials as “any systematic description of the techniques and exercises to be used in classroom teaching.” Celce-Muria (1991) and Richards (2002; 2005) denote that the goal to create learning materials is to design resources for effective learning. Richards (2002) also notes that designing learning material has a purpose to develop a sequence of activities that leads teachers and students through a learning route that is at an appropriate level of difficulty, is engaging, that provides both motivating and useful practices. Moreover, it is essential for learning materials to be interested and encouraging students to practice (Rowntree cited in Richards, 2002). Learning material should also help students feel at ease and develop their confidence (Tomlinson cited in Richards, 2002). Consequently, learning materials ought to provide opportunities for individual practice and for self-assessment of learning.

Related to material development, Miller (1995) suggests that it is better to prepare one own materials designed for students and their needs for three reasons: (1) local contexts allow students to focus on language-use rather than battle with strange contexts, (2) materials produced in-house can be easily updated, and (3) students appreciate the personal touch of their teacher in materials produced specifically for them.

2.1.1The Nature of Listening and Reading to Foreign Language
Gebhard (1996), Hadley (2001), and Nunan (1999) point out that listening is not a passive skill, rather; it is a reactive skill for it places many demands involving the processes of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli (Jones and Plass, 2002). Thus, listeners are expected to comprehend spoken language.

Mohammed (2005) asserts at least there are three stages of listening comprehension for EFL students: (1) listening and making no response; (2) listening and making short responses; and (3) listening and making longer responses. More comprehensively, Zengfu (cited in Guo, 2005) proposes that EFL students needs to experience five stages in listening comprehension: (1) hearing a series of sounds for students cannot understand the content at all and since they need to feel for the pronunciation and intonation of English; (2) distinguishing some isolated, content-related words; (3) distinguishing phrases and sentence patterns from the language; (4) distinguishing clauses or sentences in the language flow, knowing their implications, and having a reasonable understanding of the whole content; and (5) generally understanding most spoken texts coherently.

Meanwhile, Anderson (in Nunan, 2003:68) defines reading as a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background knowledge to build meaning. The goal of reading is comprehension. This means that the meaning does not only depend on the reader or the text, but depends on the interaction of both. In other words, during reading a reader processes, in his mind, new information from the text by integrating them with his background knowledge. Detailed process of reading is presented in the following section.
2.1.2 The Processes in Listening and Reading to Foreign Language
When it comes to listening, one must “comprehend the text as they listen to it, retain information in memory, integrate it with what follows, and continually adjust their understanding of what they hear in the light of prior knowledge and incoming information” (Osada, 2004). Related to this, Hoven (1999) points out that there are two major principles underlying the understanding of the process in EFL listening comprehension: (1) interactive process; and (2) cognitive activity.

In interactive process, as people listen, they process not only what they hear, but also connect it to other information they already know. Moreover, cognitive activity explained that much of the principle of interactivity are interrelated with the predominantly cognitive nature of listening (Hoven, 1997). This is due to the fact that majority of the processing dynamics occur within the cognitive domain, with some involvement of the metacognitive and socio-affective domain (O’Malley and Rubin cited in Hoven, 1997). Within this process, listening skills being developed include both micro and macro skills.

Micro skills are related to bottom-up process which includes understanding incoming language proceeding from sounds, into words, into grammatical relationship and lexical meaning and so on (Celce-Muria, 1991; Guo, 2005; Nunan, 2003). Here, listening is done in a linear fashion from the smallest meaningful unit (phonemes) to complete texts. It is text-based. The activities involve listening for specific details, recognizing word-order patterns, and recognizing sound distinctions.

Meanwhile, macro skills involve top-down processing, which is listener-based (Guo, 2005). The skills include inferring situations, participants, and goals using real-world knowledge and using non verbal clues such as facial, kinestic, body language to decipher meanings (Brown, 2001). The strategies include listening for main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, and summarizing.

On the other hand, researchers of both first and second language reading have argued against the view that texts are self-contained objects and it is the reader’s job to recover the text’s meaning so that they have proposed a dynamic relationship between text and reader (Wallace, 1939:39). It is explained that texts do not contain meaning but they have potential for meaning. This potential is realized only when there is interaction between text and reader. In this case, Singhal (1998) cites Rumelhart (1977) that reading, whether in a first or second language context involves the reader, the text, and the interaction between the reader and the text. This process is better known as interactive reading models (Barnett in Hadley, 2001; Murtagh, 1989; Anderson in Nunan, 2002; Brown, 2001).

This study uses the interactive approach to reading as the springboard in developing reading materials, when integrating the materials and the exercises, and in presenting them using computer-based multimedia. In other words, the courseware developed should reflect the description of interactive model of reading.

2.2 Developing Materials and Activities for Listening and Reading
2.2.1 The Aspects of Listening Materials and Tasks
There are three important aspects to be well considered in developing listening materials. These aspects are setting conditions for effective listening, text features, and context features. Berne (cited in Osada, 2004) provides nine facts regarding a second or a foreign language listening comprehension: (1) familiarity with passage content will definitely facilitate FL listening comprehension; (2) lower-proficiency FL listeners attend to phonological cue, whilst higher-proficiency FL listeners attend to semantic cues; (3) the degree of FL listening proficiency determines the effectiveness of different types of speech modifications or visual aids (4) repetition of passages should be encouraged. It is necessary to let listeners listen to a passage more than one time; (5) pre-listening activities, for instance, a short synopses of a passage is helpful to facilitate FL listening comprehension; (6) related to attitudinal and attentional factors, compared to audiotape, videotape is more useful; (7) especially for higher-proficiency FL listeners, the use authentic listening passages leads to greater improvement; (8) it is necessary to train and teach how to use listening strategies; and (9) there is a need of wide range of situations where listening is required as well as different types of listening, different types of listening passages, different modes of presentation, and different types of activities or tasks.

Text features cover information organization, familiarity of topic, explicitness, type of input (genre), and level of intimacy (Anderson and Lynch cited in Nunan, 1999; Hoven 1997). Meanwhile, context features deals with those not directly related to the language of the text, such as the rate delivery and length of passage.

Additionally, in order to make an assumption that the text is suitable for the listeners, Eggins (1994) proposes two formulas, which is measuring (1) lexical density and (2) grammatical intricacy. If the number of lexical density is close to 1, it means that the number of content words including verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs is proportional to the number of non-content words including pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and articles. Meanwhile, if the number of grammatical intricacy is equal to 1, it means that the type of sentences in the text is simple sentences, which contains only one clause.

Regarding the aspects of listening tasks featuring the classification of listening performance, listener function and response demand, Brown (2004) provides six types of listening performance: (1) reactive—focuses pronunciation through brief coral or individual drills; (2) intensive—focuses on phonemes, words, intonation and discourse marker; (3) responsive—focuses on the process of understanding and responding to teacher’s talk; (4) selective—focuses on practicing to scan the material selectively for certain information; (5) extensive—requires listeners to invoke other interactive skills; and (6) interactive—focuses on students to focus on discussion, debate and group work. Moreover, Lund (cited in Hadley, 2001:185-186) lists six listener functions: (1) identification—includes identification of words, word categories, phonemic distinctions, morphological distinctions or semantic cues to meaning; (2) orientation—identification of important facts about the text, i.e. the participant, the situation, the general topic, the text type, etc.; (3) main idea comprehension—understanding of the higher-order ideas in the listening passage; (4) detail comprehension—understanding of more specific information; (5) full comprehension—understanding of both the main ideas and supportive details; and (6) replication—ability to reproduce the message through repetition of the content or transcription.

Further, these aspects of listening tasks are combined with the nine listening responses developed by Richards (2005) and modified by Lund (cited in Hadley, 2001:187), i.e. (1) doing—implying a physical response; (2) choosing—involving activities i.e. putting pictures in order or matching a text with picture; (3) transferring—including filling in a graph, tracing a route, and other transferring of information from one modality to another; (4) answering—requiring listener to answer a set of comprehension questions for specific information in the text; (5) condensing—including taking notes based on the listening passage; (6) extending—involving activities i.e. creating an ending, completing a partial transcript, and so on; (7) duplicating—providing evidence that the function of replication has been accomplished; (8) modeling—involving imitation of features of the text; and (9) conversing—implying some kind of interaction with the text.

2.2.2 Developing Materials for Reading Comprehension
Nunan (1999:266-267) suggests five steps in designing a reading course, i.e. deciding overall purpose, identifying text and tasks, identifying linguistic elements, sequencing and integrating texts and tasks, and link reading to other skills. Deciding overall purpose is important because goal statements are used as a basis for developing instructional objectives (Brown, 1995;1999). Identifying or selecting text requires material developer to decide whether the texts are selected from authentic or created materials. Nuttal (1982:25) points out that there are three factors that should be considered when selecting texts, i.e. readability, suitability of content, and exploitability. Meanwhile, (Day, 1999) presents seven factors involved as the criteria in selecting an EFL reading passage i.e. interest, exploitability, readability, topic, political appropriateness, cultural suitability, and appearance.

In relation with identifying reading task, Day and Park (2005) posit that that well-designed comprehension questions can be used to help students interact with the text to create or construct meaning. Such questions demand information that represents outcomes of the comprehension process (cf. Myers and Brent-Harris 2004). Consequently before making the questions, the types of comprehension outputs should be selected first. One reference for comprehension output is The Barrett’s (1968) taxonomy of the Cognitive and Affective Dimension of Reading Comprehension (Myers, 2004; Day and Park, 2005; Hadley, 2001) which consists of five comprehension outcomes, i.e. literal comprehension, reorganization, inferential comprehension, evaluation, and appreciation. The comprehension output then is delivered through several forms of questions (Day and Park, 2005) like yes/no, alternative, true or false, Wh-, and multiple choice questions.

Identifying the linguistic elements refers to analysis on grammatical, lexical and/or discoursal elements (Nunan, 1999). Considering that the materials developed in this present study are presented in computer multimedia, the linguistic elements of the texts used are presented as generic help provided in the same screen with texts and exercises. Students only need to click the grammar help whenever they need.

The fourth steps in designing a reading program is sequencing and integrating the selected texts and tasks. This stage may be started by referring to approaches to syllabus design for the program. Finally, the reading program designed is linked to other language skills of language interactions that mirror sequences in daily life (Nunan, 1999).
2.3 Presenting Listening and Reading Materials in Computer Based Multimedia
In terms of methodological framework of CALL, Hubbard (cited in Hoven, 1997 and 1999) proposes three components: (1) approach, (2) design, and (3) procedure. In the approach, the role of computer is determined. If it is to instruct, then students are responders, not initiator following a set of learning objectives predetermined learning paths. If it is to assist, then there is no predetermined learning path and students are initiators taking responsibilities for their own learning.

Furthermore, the design of a CALL should cover student variables, syllabus orientation, content, program focus, and hardware as well as programming language. Meanwhile, the procedure should consist of the activity types, presentational scheme, input judging, feedback, control options, and screen layouts incorporated into the CALL.

The prototype software being developed is included into the instructional approach in which the activities take place in doing exercises. Here, students are responders, not initiators. The computer instructs them and they learn from the computer. However, the purpose of the prototype software developed in this study is to assist students to support the development of their intellectual capacities as abstract operational thoughts assist them in applying logical thinking to solve complex problems (Brown, 2001).

2.3.1 Cognitive Approach to Multimedia Learning
There are three assumptions underlying how people learn under cognitive approach: (1) humans use one “channel” for processing visual information and a second one for processing auditory information; (2) there is a limit to how much information can be processed in each channel at a time; and (3) humans are active processors of information, not passive receptors (Kinnamon, 2003). Thus, cognitive approach is closely related to information processing and problem solving to interface design in multimedia environment.

In an attempt to design effective multimedia instructional practices, Sorden (2005) combines five principles based on cognitive theory—theory of perceiving and knowing, thinking, remembering, understanding language, and learning. These principles are: (1) Baddeley’s model of Working Memory, Sweller’s Theory of Cognitive Load, and Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning for effects of presenting multimedia learning; and (2) Anderson’s ACT-R Cognitive Architecture and Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory for levels of processing that can occur within or between the visual and verbal systems.

The cognitive theory model of multimedia consists of five modes of knowledge representation. Physical representations represent words or pictures that are presented to the student, while sensory representations represent the ears or eyes of the student. The shallow or short-term memory representations represents sounds or images attended to by the student, and deep working memory representations represent verbal and pictorial models constructed by the student. Moreover, long-term memory representations represent the student’s relevant prior knowledge. Figure 1 shows this cognitive theory model of multimedia learning.