“Listen and Understand What I Am Saying”: Church-Listening As a Challenge for Non-Native Listeners of English in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article uses computer-assisted analysis to study the listening environment provided by Bible readings and preaching during church services. It focuses on the vocabulary size needed to comprehend 95% and 98% of the running words of the input (lexical coverage levels indicating comprehension in connection with listening) and on the place of infrequent vocabulary in liturgical discourse. The finding that 4,000 words and 7,000 words, respectively, are needed to reach the target levels for lexical coverage suggests that non-native listeners with vocabularies of just a few thousand words may be seriously challenged by church listening.