| This is a longitudinal study of the contribution of academic lectures to the learning of Economics 1 by twelve female international students from non-English-speaking backgrounds at a university in Melbourne, Australia. The focus of the study is on listening comprehension, and the data include pre- and post-lecture tests, written summaries, video and audio tapes of the lectures, questionnaires, interviews, informants' reports on video-taped replays of sections of the lectures, the lecturer's overhead visuals, the informants' lecture notes, the informants' grades in the unit at the end of the semester, and the researcher's observations and field notes.; The findings suggest that recall of material presented in the lectures is highly idiosyncratic, with little of the material presented being recalled, and there is no relationship between recall as measured by the post-lecture test and the written summaries, and the grades achieved by the informants on the assignment tasks and final examination. The informants frequently reported that the lecturer's speech rate caused comprehension difficulties, but analysis shows that the rates were within the normal range. In their reports on the video-taped extracts, the informants recalled the material presented and rarely referred to the speech rates of the lecturer as causing comprehension difficulties. However, the lecturer presented approximately 25 overhead visuals in the course of each lecture, and the informants saw their task as transcribing these visuals, to prepare for the end of semester examination.; The study suggests that the informants performed poorly on the recalls and summary tasks because they did not listen to the lectures as their attention was focussed on the transcription of the visuals. The relative success of the informants in passing the examination is more likely to have resulted from learning processes other than listening comprehension and note-taking. Learning derives from a highly complex, multi-dimensional set of processes which must be seen within an interpretive framework which includes the perspective of the learner and the social context in which the learning is set.; The study raises important questions about the nature of learning at university, and the utility of lectures, and has implications for English for Academic Purposes courses and materials, and research into second language listening comprehension. |
