A Study Of Video Effect On Efl Learners' Listening Comprehension

Nowadays, linguists and educators have put great emphasis on listening teaching in China, but the listening proficiency of average college students still needs to be improved. Therefore, it is of great importance and value to carry out a study on listening process and listening comprehension. Visual aid instrument could improve learners'comprehension efficiently, and it was proved by Liu (2004) to have positive effects on reading comprehension. However, the role of visual aid instrument in EFL learners'listening comprehension needs to be explored. This paper aims to study the video effect on EFL learners'listening comprehension.Sixty-two non-English major sophomores were evenly divided into two presentation technique groups, i.e. the video group and the non-video group. Subjects in each group were also divided into two proficiency groups, i.e. the low-proficiency group and the high-proficiency group. During the listening process, the subjects were exposed to a low-level listening text Wild China and then a high-level one Online Photo Sharing.The empirical results demonstrate that the presentation variable and the interaction between proficiency variable and presentation variable didn't exert significant effects on EFL learners'listening performance when they were presented with the low-level text. Meanwhile, EFL learners', especially low-proficiency learners, benefit more from high-level listening accompanied with visual clips than from the same text without visual aid.Comparison of immediate recall protocol scores reveals subjects'performances vary due to different presentation techniques when they were exposed to the high-level listening text. The combination of verbal and visual information has advantage over the presentation of only verbal information, and this confirms with dual coding theory. When the listening material is presented to learners with the video presentation technique, it could activate more EFL learners'schemata and help them apply the top-down and bottom-up processing modes better. At last, the implications of the study are discussed. This study casts light on the improvement of presentation techniques and the selection of listening materials.