Enhancing Listening Skills of English Department Students in West Aceh through the ‘Cake’ Application

Rena Juliana

Abstract


In an era where English proficiency has become a crucial skill for personal, academic, and professional success, the ‘Cake’ application offers a unique blend of language learning and gamification. This study aimed to investigate the application’s contribution to improvements in the listening skills of English department students of STAIN Teungku Dirundeng Meulaboh, West Aceh, Indonesia, and their perceptions and attitudes towards using the ‘Cake’ application for improving their listening skills. The research design employed was a survey involving 20 students enrolled in the Intermediate Listening Class and Advanced Listening Class. The data collection was done by using an online questionnaire. The results indicate that the ‘Cake’ application successfully enhanced the listening skills of a significant number of participants, with most of the respondents reporting positive outcomes and improvements in their comprehension of spoken English. Students also perceived the ‘Cake’ application achieved a massive uptake by its users. The site is user-friendly, and interactive and discusses issues about EFL learners. In addition, users could use various English accents and dialects while listening. In essence, many users affirmed that they experienced great benefits by using the ‘Cake’ app to enhance their listening capabilities. However, the finding also indicated that some students perceived the ‘Cake’ application as boring and needed innovation and improvement in existing learning methods to address potential boredom among learners.


Keywords


‘Cake’ application; English Department students; listening skills

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.24815/eej.v15i4.41692

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P-ISSN: 2085-3750

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.