The Effects of Transcript Use on Advanced ESL Listening Comprehension

Abstract

This study examined the efficacy of transcript use with repeated listening exercises to improve advanced ESL student listening comprehension. Thirty-one students enrolled in an intensive English program from various L1 backgrounds participated with 15 in the treatment group and 16 in the control group. Between a pretest and posttest at the beginning and end of a 14-week semester, students in both the treatment and control groups completed a repeated listening exercise twice each week with novel recordings. Treatment group students participated in repeated listening exercise including a sequence of listening without the transcript, listening with the transcript, and finally listening again without the transcript. They answered comprehension questions between the first and second listening. Students in the control group listened to the same audio repeated the same number of times and answered the same comprehension questions but never had access to the transcript. Repeated measures ANOVA results for this quasi-experimental study show that the treatment group students outperformed the control group students on listening comprehension test items between the pretest and posttest. These findings suggest the potential benefit of transcript use to improve overall listening comprehension for advanced ESL learners. We encourage TESOL practitioners to consider whether transcript use might facilitate listening comprehension in their classrooms, and we call for additional research to determine the appropriateness of transcript use in other TESOL contexts.