The effect of text and picture accompaniments to audio materials on comprehension level and response time of EFL learners

Abstract

Visual aids accompanying listening tasks are of special significance in second or foreign language teaching. This study examined the effects of text/picture accompaniments to audio recordings on language learners' performance. The main aim was to investigate the effect of texts and pictures, presented jointly, on audio-based listening scores and response time. A group of language learners took some listening comprehension tests, with or without text/picture aids, under three conditions of (1) text/picture-before listening to audio recordings, (2) text/picture-during listening to audio recordings and (3) text/picture-free listening. According to results from tests of within-subjects effects and pair-wise comparisons, listeners' scores varied significantly across the three test conditions (p = 0.002), with 82, 73 and 72 for the text/picture-before, text/picture-during and text/picture-free listening, respectively. As for the response time, the text/picture-before and text/picture-during conditions consumed significantly more time than the text/picture-free condition (M = 40.97 and 40.12 versus 23.61 sec). The response time was significantly affected by the presentation modes (texts, pictures or audio recording) used to convey audio information, especially in the text/picture-included conditions. © 2012 Asian Network for Scientific Information.