Investigation of a multimedia approach to teaching spoken English

The purpose of this study was to investigate how learners will interact with multimedia that delivers pictures, audio, and various interactional modifications in teaching spoken English to Korean elementary school children who are currently taking ESL courses or having lessons from private tutors in the USA. In this study, two activities, listening and speaking, were studied using a commercial multimedia CD-ROM program, \u27Smart Start English\u27 by Syracuse language System, Inc. According to the results of this research through speaking and listening activities, it seems obvious that such multimedia CD-ROM programs can be used effectively for assisting L2 students to make interactional modifications with a computer when learning spoken English. But there was a large variation of the amount of interaction (time spent or help option used) between individuals depending on learners\u27 level of English, learning strategy and/or style.;Some students used as many options in the program as possible, while the others did not. Most of the students showed a positive attitude toward learning English with computers. A common difficulty was observed among students in pronouncing some English words that are related to generally known Korean specific problems. It seems that the speech recognition technology is not as perfect as a native-speaking teacher would be. Nevertheless, such multimedia CD-ROM programs would be very useful in Korea, a country where English is rarely used for social interaction and there is not enough opportunity for interactional modifications in the English classroom because there is usually only one non-native speaking teacher for many students, making it impossible for the teacher to engage in interactional modifications with individual students