Developing Listening Comprehension in esl students at the Intermediate Level by Reading Transcripts While Listening: a cognitive Load Perspective

Instruments

The test used in this study was the ELC's Computer-Adaptive Placement (CAPE) test.This CAPE test is a multiple-choice computer-adaptive test that was authored and validated byfaculty at Brigham Young University (BYU) in the late 1990s. The CAPE is designed to measurestudents’ current language ability based on the ACTFL scale and then place them in the correctlevel or course. The development of the CAPE required significant research to calibrate anddetermine the difficulty of each question. The CAPE has evolved to now being administeredonline. The English Language CAPE test has three sections; listening, reading, and writing, andthe CAPE has been calibrated with the ACTFL proficiency guidelines (ACTFL, 2012). TheCAPE test is used widely across the nation for placement for L2 language learners. The sameCAPE test used at the ELC is now "run by Perpetual Technology Group (PTG), which has turnedit into a web-based exam, called 'webCAPE'.PTG is the exclusive licensee of Brigham YoungUniversity’s webCAPE.PTG has been offering webCAPE since 2004 and now has over 200institutionalized clients globally" (Perpetual Technology Group, 2020). The listening section ofthe CAPE test was used as the pretest at the beginning of the study and then as the post test at theconclusionofthe study.
Empirical-simply put,empirical is an adjective that refers to somethingthat’sbasedon,concernedwith, orverifiablebyexperimentorobservation rather than pure logic or theory. Thetreatmentclassmetat9:30AMandthecontrolclassmetat12:15PM.Bothclasseswerepresentedwithtwo listening passages eachweek.
The listening passages used (see appendix) were taken from the course textbook, PrismListening and Speaking, level 2 published by Cambridge University Press in 2017 (Lansford et.a., 2017).In order to maintain the validity of this study, the passages were unavailable in theonline part of the course so that the students could not listen to them on their own. The passagesfrom the book were read by 3-4 different actors, using both male and female voices. Theauthenticityofthelisteningpassagescouldbeconsideredalimitationofthestudywhenusingthe authenticity standards set forth by Gilmore (2007), who found that the most workable methodfor determining authenticity was the ‘real’ method, “the language produced by a realspeaker/writer for a real audience, conveying a real message" (p. 98). In order to maintainconsistency between the two classes, passages from this textbook were used even though theylacked authenticity. The passages were on the topics that were talked about in class and wereusuallyabout common issuesofthe day suchas the environment ortechnology.
Each passage took approximately 10-15 minutes of class time to complete. Theinstructional procedure varied by group (See Table 1). The control class listened to the passagethree times with short discussions between each listening. The treatment class listened to thepassage once, had a short discussion about the material, and then listened a second time whilereading a copy of the transcript that was handed out at that point. Before listening a third time,the students were instructed to turn over the paper and listen a third time for any words that theymay not understand. After the teacher answered any student questions after the third listening,class resumed. There were times that the content of the passage was a topic that students wantedtotalkabout, andthatinterestmay haveled tothemspend more time on some of the passages, butgenerallythesameamountoftimewastakenineachclass.Similarquestionscameupinboth classes, although the class with the transcript seemed to focus in on more specificvocabularywords withwhich theywere unfamiliar.