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

Table1

InterventionConditionsforControlandTreatmentGroups



ControlGroup TreatmentGroup

Step1 Listento theconversation Listen to the conversationStep2 Listenagain Listenagain+readtranscript
Step3 Classdiscussion Classdiscussion

Step4 Listen again + focus oncomprehension
Listenagainwithnotranscript

One of the possible problems that should be noted with the implementation of theapproach was that the sound from the video projectors used in both classes was not high qualityand at times had static or was difficult to hear. However, both the control group and thetreatment group used the same projector, so the effect of the audio quality was the same for bothgroups.

DataAnalysis

Inordertoanswertheresearchquestionaskedinthisstudy,whateffectdoestheteachingstrategy of reading-while-listening have on overall listening comprehension for intermediate-level ESL students, the results of the pre and post CAPE tests for the participants were analyzed.These scores were analyzed using Jamovi software (2020), a well-known and trusted softwareprogram that provides statistical analyses such as t-tests and ANOVAs. Before looking at theresultsindetail,itisimportant tonotethat only17students fromeachsection tookthefinal
CAPE; one student from each class did not complete the study, and data from those participantswere removed from the study. The data was analyzed using a repeated measures ANOVA, whichincluded the within-subjects effects and the between-subjects effects. The eta-squared valueswere determined as well in order to address the possibility of the small size of this study givinganinaccurate p value.

CHAPTER IV.RESULTS

The descriptive statistics (See Table 2) showed that over a 14-week semester the studentsin the control group had a 4.5% increase in overall listening comprehension and the students inthe treatment group had a 7.5% increase in overall listening comprehension. Both classes hadincreases in listening comprehension over the 14-week semester, as shown in Table 3. The datashowed a significant difference [F (1, 32) = 20.12, p <.001] for all participants when comparingthe pretest and post-test scores. The procedure was used for 12 weeks over a 14-week semesterin an intensive English program, so significant gains from studying English in a full-time settingare to be expected regardless of any specific strategy used by teachers. The data that will answerthe research question of whether intermediate-level students showed significant gains in overalllistening comprehension from RWL is the difference between the gains in the control group andthe treatment group. The data in Table 4 show that there is no significant difference between thecontrol and treatment groups [F (1, 32) = 2.86, p = 0.101], or no interaction effect between thecontrol and treatment groups. The p value is over 0.05, which indicates that there was nosignificant difference between the two classes. The students who used RWL increased theirlistening comprehension post-test scores by 3% more than those who listened-only to the samepassages,however this gain is notconsideredsignificant. With studies done over a short period, such as one or two activities, it is difficult to knowif the gains in comprehension came from reading or from listening, or if RWL helps with overalllistening comprehension. Participants in Diao et. al. (2007) did show short-term gains for somestudents, meaning for one activity using RWL, however, when the authors extended their studyto look at consecutive studies where the students were not given transcripts, their results did notshow the same gains for listening comprehension. This was reinforced by the results of theMoussa-Inaty,etal.studywheretheirstudyalsoincludeddatafromreadingonlyanddiscoveredthat reading only showed greater gains in listening comprehension than RWL. Other than theChang (2011) study, there were no studies found that attempted to find the benefits to overalllistening comprehension from using RWL over an extended period of time. The current studyhelps to fill the gaps in previous studies and the call for further research over a longer periodtime found in the existing studies done using RWL. In order to provide empirical evidence thatRWL helps with listening comprehension overall, this study focused on a semester-long courseusingRWLas part ofthe pedagogical strategies.
As noted in many of the previous studies referenced in the review of literature, thequestion of proficiency level was also either taken into consideration as part of the study or thestudy inadvertently found that there was a correlation between realized gains and the proficiencylevel of the student. The proficiency level of the participants in most of the studies was notexplicitly determined, which makes it difficult to generalize the findings of these studies withregards to the proficiency level. The Danan (2016) study, the Diao et. al.(2007), and the Chang(2009) studies all shared similar findings, concluding that there was a difference in the benefitsfrom RWL for different proficiency levels of language learners. Danan (2016) showed that mostoftheparticipantsinherstudybenefitedwhen theyusedRWL overa4-weektimeperiod. The study showed that the more advanced students benefited greatly from transcripts, but lower-levelparticipants didn't have the same benefit, and one lower-level student in particular achievedlower scores in overall listening comprehension when using RWL. In Diao et. al. (2007), lower-level students did not benefit from RWL. Chang (2009) showed that RWL for lower-levelstudents actually resulted in a lower score in the sequencing comprehension tests using RWL ascompared with the higher-level students. Chang (2009) said that "reading-while-listening shouldbe seen as listening support through written texts, especially for lower level listeners where themain purpose is to help them confirm what they hear" (p. 654). Chang posited that "lower levelstudents' reading skills might not be as good as those of higher level ones, hence their globalcomprehension was not particularly enhanced by reading the script" (p. 661). Moussa-Inaty et.al. (2012) acknowledged that one of the limitations of their study was that there was no explicitlevel ascertained for the participants, and therefore it was difficult to generalize the results forpracticaluse.
The present study took into account the proficiency level of the participants in a way thatcould show that RWL may have different effects for students with different proficiency levels.Many of the studies provided the length of time that their participants had studied English, but nodefinitive way of assessing their level of proficiency. The Danan (2016) study did have a levelassessment done, however, the participants in that study were at all different proficiency levels.The present study did assess the level of the students, however, future studies are needed in ordertocomparetheresultsbetweenlevelstotrytoascertainifRWLmaycauseunnecessarycognitive load that creates redundancy for lower-level L2 language learners. Moussa-Inaty et. al.(2012)broughtupaninterestingquestionofthepossibilityofthecognitiveloadofRWLactuallycontributingtobeginning-level studentsdoing more poorlywithlistening comprehension than if they had listening-only, which could be an interesting question for furtherstudy.
As shown by previous studies done on RWL, there is benefit for comprehension forsingle listening activities for L2 learners. RWL has also been shown to help with motivation andconcentration with listening activities, and therefore could be considered an effective teachingstrategy for teaching listening. The present study showed small gains of 3% in overall listeningcomprehension for students who use the RWL listening strategy, however, this gain is notconsidered statistically significant. Further studies could be done to support this study and alsoshowat whatproficiencylevelsRWLwill havethe mostbenefit for L2learners.