A study on improving EFL learners' listening skills through Education Informatics Network (EBA) and identifying learners' perceptions towards the platform

Language teaching environment changed its direction from utilizing modern approaches to the postmodern approaches since the postmodern approach is learning and learner-oriented, participatory and contributory, individualized, global, digitalized and flexible in terms of time and place (Uzun, 2012). Considering these, the current study aims to utilize Education Informatics Network (EBA) in order to improve learners' listening skills and identify their thoughts about the platform. The participants of the study were 44 6th grade students in a state school. They were divided into two groups as the experimental and control group. Both of them consisted of 22 students. While the experimental group made use of the EBA materials to study listening, the control group utilized course book materials. The mixed-method one group research design was adopted and the pre-test-post-test technique was applied to gather quantitative data in order to understand achievement differences between the groups and see whether a significant difference occurred or not. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 5 successful and 5 unsuccessful participants of the experimental group to gather qualitative data to investigate learners' perceptions towards the course and the EBA platform. The quantitative data were analyzed through IBM SPSS 21 while the qualitative data were put into coding for further understanding. The results of the study pointed out that utilizing the EBA material created statistically significant difference between the scores of the groups. Besides, it was seen that the perceptions of the learners towards the platform were positive as they stated that using the platform was attractive, fun and motivating.