<![CDATA[Listening in ESP maritime English requires sea transportation cadets to accurately and quickly understand safety announcements, operational instructions, and service communications, yet conventional listening instruction rarely provides authentic, adaptive practice. This study examined the effectiveness of AI-assisted gamified listening instruction on cadets' listening comprehension and explored their perceptions of the intervention. This study used a one-group pre-test-post-test design along with the perception questionnaire distributed to 40 cadets who completed four structured sessions combining AI-generated audio materials with gamification elements. The results indicated a significant increase in the participants' listening skills from the before session (M = 60.85) and after session (M = 82.63) [t (39) = -16.94, p < .001], respectively. It was also supported by a very high effect size (Cohen's d = 1.97) and a medium N-Gain (0.56). The majority of the respondents gave a new method excellent ratings (M = 3.60, SD = 0.40) as a tool that they found extremely relevant and useful. Therefore, these findings confirm the effectiveness of integrating AI-generated authentic audio with gamification, not only in improving students' listening skills but also in gaining students' acceptance of the learning method, thereby offering an effective solution to ESP listening teaching methods especially in the fields of maritime and transport education. Future research should employ larger and more diverse samples, longer intervention periods, and control-group designs to examine the long-term effectiveness and broader applicability of AI-assisted gamified listening instruction in maritime ESP contexts.]]>
