Enhancement of Learners’ Receptive Skills through Task-Based Activities to Understand the Eco-Centric Issues Using Wall-E

Abstract

Animation films inspired by eco-centric ideas, such as green studies, pave the way for learners to explore the problems caused by humans to nature, such as air pollution, deforestation, climate change, and trash pollution. On the other hand, animated movies also help to motivate and develop learners reading and listening skills. This study focuses on developing learners’ receptive skills using the eco-centric theme-based animation movie “Wall-E” through task-based activities (TBA). TBA is a technique that helps students prepare themselves by having participants evaluate their goals for listening, understanding information, and developing their language needs. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of understanding the eco-theme in the animation movie Wall-E and to enhance learners receptive skills using TBA. A pre-experimental study was carried out with a one-group pre-test and post-test. The study samples were selected using purposive sampling. Initially, a pre-questionnaire was circulated to 103 participants with Arts backgrounds to test their language proficiency and understanding of eco-centric ideas. Based on the results obtained from the pre-questionnaire, 36 participants were subjected to a pre-test, after which activities were given using TBA during tasks or task cycles, language focus, and finally a post-test. Each activity focuses on reading and listening tasks to develop the learners’ comprehension, thereby promoting and understanding ecological issues from the movie. The result of the study shows that there is a gradual improvement in the mean score between the paired-t test of pre-test and post-test, which is (t [36] = 6.13889, P< 0.001), the P value being less than 0.005. The present study was suggestive that TBA effectively developed learners’ receptive skills and also motivated learners about environmental issues in the movie Wall-E.