| This dissertation explores the effectiveness of two types of instructional videos on the development of listening comprehension abilities of fourth-semester, foreign language (FL) learners of Spanish. Authentic listening materials (e.g., radio and television programs originally created for a native-speaker audience) play a decidedly dominant role in the FL curriculum, as their cultural and linguistic content is believed to better prepare learners to understand the target language than so-called non-authentic materials, or listening materials specifically designed for the learner (Altman, 1989). Some educators, however, argue that, because of the linguistic nature of authentic materials and because of affective reasons, learners cannot fully benefit from authentic listening materials (e.g., Omaggio, 1986). Consequently, some educators have begun to use so-called simulated-authentic materials in the classroom, which purportedly alleviate some of the linguistic obstacles for learners while maintaining a degree of cultural authenticity.;Simulated-authentic materials are especially prevalent in the form of video and are becoming increasingly popular (cf., Bacon, 1989). Yet, no empirical comparison is available of the effectiveness of simulated-authentic video relative to authentic video for the development of listening comprehension abilities. This dissertation presents the results of a study that makes just such a comparison. A total of 57 fourth-semester students of Spanish at an American university participated in a study lasting fifteen weeks. Subjects were assigned to one of three groups: (1) An experimental group exposed to an authentic Mexican soap opera (n = 19); (2) an experimental group exposed to a simulated-authentic soap opera (Destinos, VanPatten, 1992) (n = 19); and (3) a control group (n = 19). A pretest/posttest comparison of the effectiveness of the treatments involved the participants watching authentic and simulated-authentic video segments. Comprehension was assessed with two instruments: (1) a written recall protocol, which tested participants' overall comprehension of the segments; and (2) a true-false test, testing participants' comprehension of individual sentences.;The analysis of the pretest/posttest data revealed that the simulated-authentic video group benefited more from its treatment, increasing both its overall comprehension of the segments and its comprehension of individual sentences. Participants in the authentic video treatment improved their abilities only to comprehend individual sentences. Based on a comparison of the two discourse-pragmatic features of the two video treatments (cf. Givon, 1990), the researcher attributed the results to the fact that the discourse of the simulated- authentic video enjoyed greater overall coherence than did the authentic video, a factor that research in cognition (e.g., Fletcher et al., 1996) and FL acquisition (Brown et al., 1986) has associated with high levels of comprehension. |
