Facilitating Textually Assisted Listening Comprehension

The impact of written texts, as a form of visual support, on foreign language learners’ listening comprehension has received special attention in recent years. This study investigated the role of written texts as a form of support in comprehending audio materials. The main objective was to examine the effect of texts on audio-based listening. A linguistically homogeneous groups of second language learners listened to audio texts under different conditions of (1) texts before listening to audio materials (2) texts during listening to audio materials and (3) text-free listening. According to results, from pair-wise comparisons, listeners' scores varied significantly across the three test formats (p<0.001), with 78, 74 and 60 (out of 100) for the text-before, texts-during and texts-free listening respectively. Listeners’ better performance in the two text-included formats indicated the significance of textual support in enhancing second language listening comprehension, while their supremacy in the text-before condition, over the text-during format, indicated the importance of the order of presenting such support.