The effect of audio, a single picture, multiple pictures, or video on second-language listening comprehension

Although aural and visual media have long been used in the second-language classroom, relatively little information exists to show that media are really effective for preparing students to deal with communicative situations. This study investigated whether hearing the audio of natural dialogs without images or in conjunction with single, multiple, or moving-video images facilitated listening comprehension in college students enrolled in intermediate- and advanced-French courses and contrasted them with students who saw only the visual portion of the same dialogs.;A total of 75 paid, volunteer subjects (24 advanced-French, 27 intermediate-French, and 24 visual-only) were presented four dialogs each displayed with increasing amounts of visual information: audio only, one still picture, multiple still pictures, moving-video images. Subjects' listening comprehension was measured by ability to recognize information from the dialog, to actively recall main ideas and details, and to generate inferences. The general findings were: (a) Adding images almost always improves listening comprehension of dialogs and reduces recall errors, with moving images leading to the most improvement. (b) Paralinguistic cues aid in the interpretation of dialogs and are made obvious through the use of moving images. (c) Multiple still images my be distracting or disconcerting under some circumstances. (d) Images alone are not sufficient for representing a dialog, unless generating inferences is the desired outcome. (e) The particular images used to represent a scene may have a strong influence on how predictable the scene's content may be to the viewer. (f) Predictable scenarios may be easier to comprehend than those which are outside of the viewers/listeners frame of reference. (g) Higher-proficiency subjects appear to be better at using the available information in the listening task than lower-proficiency students, but equal to lower-proficiency students in recall of visual information.