Context and content visuals and performance on listening comprehension stimuli

Abstract

The listening comprehension section of the TOEFL has traditionally involved audio presentations of language without accompanying visual stimuli. Now that TOEFL is computer based, listening comprehension items are being created that include both audio and visual information. A nested cross-over design (participants nested in proficiency, level and form) was used to examine the effects of visual condition (present or absent), type of stimuli (dialogues/short conversations, academic discussions and mini-talks) and language proficiency (high or low) on performance on CBT (Computer-based Test) listening comprehension items. Three two-way interactions were significant: proficiency by type of stimuli, type of stimuli by visual condition and type of stimuli by time. The interaction between type of stimuli by visual condition although weak, was perhaps the most interesting and indicated that the presence of visuals results in facilitation of performance when the visuals bear information that complements the audio portion of the stimulus.

Using Video in Web-Based Listening Tests

“…Although significant differences were not found in Tables 5 and 9, considering the results from the two semesters and the large number of participants (n=161), these findings imply that the participants in this study performed better with the webbased video tests. The results of this study were in line with those of Ginther (2002) and Wagner (2007;2010b) since they demonstrated that the use of video texts on L2 listening tests leads to a better performance in comparison to audio-only texts. It should be noted, however, in the above mentioned studies, the participants were from an ESL context.…”

“…Ginther (2002) reported some participants performed better on tests which include visual input while Coniam (2001) had found that the use of video or audio test did not make a difference on students' performance. Ockey (2007) has reported on studies (Coniam, 2001;Ginther, 2002) and stated that a possible explanation for this disparity in findings may be the different types of visuals frequently used in listening passages. Where context-only visuals include visual input about the speaker, and the setting only meant to set the scene for communication, content-only visuals are meant to supplement the speaker's discourse by providing additional information to illustrate meaning.…”

“…The context visual is the title of the test projected on the screen as a caption as well as the first visual they see from the video. According to Ginther (2002), this helps to set the scene for the spoken input. Participants could see the title of the video and the visual input related to a house (See Figure 1).…”

Computer‐Assisted Language Testing

“…However, research in this area, namely on the use of visuals for listening assessment, has yielded some contentious results. On one hand, the use of multimedia has been found facilitative for test takers' performance on L2 listening tests (e.g., Ginther, 2002). Findings of other studies, however, suggest that test takers can get distracted by video and images (Wagner, 2007;Suvorov, 2009).…”

“…Although the use of multimedia input is believed to result in a greater level of authenticity in test tasks by providing more realistic content and contextualization cues, it remains unclear how the inclusion of multimedia affects the L2 construct being measured by CBTs (Jamieson, 2005). Some researchers even question the extent to which multimedia enhances the authenticity of tests (e.g., Douglas & Hegelheimer, 2007) since comparative studies on the role of multimedia in language assessment have yielded mixed results (see Ginther, 2002;Wagner, 2007;Suvorov, 2009). With regards to integrated tasks, their implementation in CBTs is generally viewed favorably because such tasks seem to better reflect what test takers would be required to do in real-life situations.…”