An investigation to see whether listening whilst reading helps immediate comprehension compared with just reading in L2 English learners

Thesis

Text-to-speech software has consistently been shown to help students with learning disabilities, yet the benefit of reading-whilst-listening for wider populations has been under-researched. One specific population which may benefit from this audio addition is second language learners. Therefore, this study investigated whether reading-whilst-listening can help a wide demographic of English language learners. A counterbalanced reading comprehension study was completed with participants having to read two texts, one with audio and one without. Their scores on comprehension tests for these two texts were then statistically analysed to see if audio made a difference. The results showed for one of the texts, the addition of audio when reading led to higher comprehension scores whilst in the other text the addition of audio hindered comprehension. Participants chose their own audio speed from three options based upon which they preferred, and exploratory analyses showed that there was no evidence that audio speed affected later comprehension performance. These findings are both in contrast to results from previous similar studies with additional English language learners which found null results and the results are also in alignment to previous results due to the second text. These results are discussed in terms of the larger sample size and wider additional language learners demographic in the current study. Thus, further research is needed.

Authors: Greenway, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-2zvkdy0ew
• Type of award: MSc taught course
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: gorilla.sc; ALSLA; reading comprehension; ALSLA2024; reading-whilst-listening; text-to-speech; quantitative; comprehensin tests; additional language learning; english learners
• Subjects: Quantitative research; Applied linguistics; Second language acquisition; English language--Study and teaching--Foreign speakers; Speed reading