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This paper focuses on how YouTube video clips are used to equip students with background knowledge when reading English newspaper articles about various global issues. It is assumed that the students could understand the articles adequately by building background knowledge about them before reading. With this assumption, this paper raises four key questions. First, are students more responsive to visual than to text-based materials? Second, do students perceive that background knowledge to an article is essential to understanding the content? Third, do YouTube video clips offer appropriate background knowledge about the articles? Fourth, how do students evaluate each YouTube video clip? 34 university students majoring in English participated in this research. Based on t-test, ANOVA, and multiple regression analyses of their questionnaires, four distinctive findings have been identified. First, visual materials provided better cues than verbal explanations when the students attempted to understand difficult vocabulary items. Second, the students recognized the importance of background knowledge for understanding the content. Third, the students’ evaluation was that the YouTube video clips played a significant role in providing background knowledge for the topics chosen. Fourth, the students understood the articles more comprehensively after watching selected YouTube video clips. |
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