A Study Of The Effects Of Videos On Chinese English Learners’ Listening Comprehension From The Perspective Of Cognitive Load

Listening plays an important role in language learning, especially, secondlanguage learning. Many researchers have been searching for ways to improvelearners’ listening ability for a quite long time. In recent years, language learners canbe exposed to a wide range of formats of aural and visual media because of thedevelopment of multimedia technology. Among them, the effect of video on secondlanguage listening has attracted lots of attention. Although many studies have drawnpositive conclusion, there are some other researchers pointing out the video does notprovide any facilitative effects for listening comprehension, sometimes even hinderslistening comprehension. These studies usually used the experiment results to supporttheir idea. However, the previous studies did not provide sufficient explanations forwhy there exist completely adverse results.Cognitive load is a load upon working memory produced when a particular taskis processed by one’s cognitive system (Sweller et al.,1998). Sweller et al.(1998)proposed four basic hypotheses toward cognitive architecture based on the cognitiveload theory, including:(a) capacity of working memory is limited;(b) capacity of longterm memory is unlimited;(c) knowledge is stored as schema in long term memory;and (d) automation is an important process for schema construction. Based oncognitive load theory, we can infer that when too much useless information is addedto learners’ working memory, more extraneous cognitive load will be produced, thusresulting in less listening comprehension.Therefore, the author assumed that adding videos will change the listeners’cognitive load produced, thus influencing the listeners’ listening comprehension.Based on the assumption, the author made a quantitative and qualitative study. Thepresent study was carried out in which Sixty English major sophomores from SichuanInternational Studies University were needed. Based on their performance in TEM-4,sixty English major sophomores were chosen as the subjects. And then they wererandomly divided into two groups, i.e. the pure-audio group and the video group. The empirical results indicate that adding video probably brings more cognitiveload to the subjects, thus resulting in less listening comprehension. Based on theresults of listening cognitive load rating scale, it is found that the students in the videogroup produce more cognitive load than the ones in the audio group. This shows thatadding videos does bring the students more cognitive load, making the tasks moredifficult, thus reducing listening comprehension, which corresponds with whatcognitive load theory infers. And the study results also indicate that the length of thetime of the video and the relatedness of information video provides to the listeningcontent can be key factors for the change of cognitive load, which may be theexplanation for the adverse conclusions in previous studies.In the end, the implications based on the findings of the present study areprovided. The study throws light on the application of video in second languagelistening classroom and the selection of listening materials in the second languagelistening tests.