Dictation is a traditional technique for both teaching and testing overall language ability and listening comprehension. In a dictation, a passage is read aloud by the teacher and examinees write down what they hear. Due to the peculiar form of dictations, psychometric analysis of dictations is challenging. In a dictation, there is no clear…

Text length is considered as one of the factors that cause listening task difficulty along with others such as speech rate, clarity of voice, accents, text genre and topic. Despite all these factors, teachers sometimes consider text length as the single reason for a listening activity's difficulty. Not many studies have focused on the length as a…

Listening to academic content in English medium instruction (EMI) classrooms at university can be a demanding task for students who transition from first language (L1) instructed secondary schools. This longitudinal mixed methods study analyzes data from 316 students collected at the beginning, midterm, and the end of their first semester after…

In this review article, we discuss the construct of second language (L2) comprehensibility, which refers to listeners' judgments of ease or difficulty in understanding L2 speech. We first briefly describe intelligibility and comprehensibility, two measures that capture listener understanding of L2 speech. We then present evidence that supports the…

Listening has long been recognized as a challenging skill for teachers, students, and researchers working within the English as a Second Language (ESL)/English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts. Moreover, up until the recent past, it was the least researched of the four language skills in second language acquisition studies. One of the issues…

This study investigates the effects of adding stem preview to an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) multiple-choice listening assessment. In stem preview, listeners may view the item stems, but not response options, before listening. Previous research indicates that adding preview to an exam typically decreases difficulty, but raises concerns…

This study examined the influence of formulaic language on second language (L2) listeners' lower-level processing, in terms of their ability to accurately identify the words in texts. On the one hand, there were reasons for expecting the presence of the formulas to advantage the learners, because the learners would process these formulaic words…

36 Saudi EFL freshmen students, at the College of Languages and Translation, took a listening-spelling test in which they filled out 100 blanks in a dialogue. Results indicated that 63% of the spelling errors were phonemic and 37% were graphemic. It was also found that the subjects had more problems with whole words than problems with graphemes…

The current paper reports an experience implementing a small-scale narrow listening scheme (one of the varieties of extensive listening) with intermediate learners of English as a foreign language in a Colombian university. The paper presents (a) how the scheme was designed and implemented, including materials and procedures (the process); (b) how…

The current study reports on a group of Taiwanese college students' first-person diary accounts of their private, transactional listening activities outside the classroom. Issues related to students' material selection, listening problems, and perceived usefulness of keeping a listening diary were explored. It was found that most students chose…

The Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) states that people learn better and comprehend more when words and pictures are presented together. The potential for English language learners to increase their comprehension of video through the use of captions, which graphically display the same language as the spoken dialogue, has been…

Listening is clearly the weakest skill of EFL students who encounter different kinds of listening problems. It is the most underestimated skill in EFL context, though. This study seeks to examine the listening problems faced by a group of first year university students whose English proficiency level is elementary. 50 EFL students from three…

Since listening is a crucial component of language competence and fundamental for successful communication as well, its development has been gradually given much attention from language teachers and researchers. This study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of two pre-listening supports, i.e. question preview and topic preparation on the…

Okazaki and Nitta (2005) developed an e-learning program called PLIMA (your Personal LIstening Manager) which focuses on improving poor phonological analysis such as the inability to hear liaison or unstressed sounds. However, the fact remains that there are certain types of liaison sounds that learners do not catch, and some types they do. This…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of English proficiency (low vs. high) and material presentation mode (single channel vs. dual channel) on English listening comprehension, cognitive load and learning attitude in a ubiquitous learning environment. An experimental learning activity was implemented using PDA as a learning…