This study investigates the listening comprehension of 388 high-intermediate listening proficiency (HILP) and low-intermediate listening proficiency (LILP) Chinese students of English as a foreign language. These students listened to a lecture, the discourse of which was (a) familiar-unmodified, (b) familiar-modified, (c) unfamiliar-unmodified, or (d) unfamiliar-modified. The modified discourse contained information redundancies and elaborations. After the lecture, the EFL subjects took a multiple-choice exam testing recognition of information presented in the lecture and general knowledge of the familiar ("Confucius and Confucianism") and unfamiliar ("The Amish People") topics. A significant interaction between speech modification (redundant vs. nonredundant speech) and listening proficiency (HILP vs. LILP) indicated that the HILP students benefited from speech modification, which entailed elaboration/redundancy of information, but the LILP students did not. A significant interaction between prior knowledge (familiar vs. unfamiliar topic) and test type (passage-independent vs. passagedependent items) was also found. For both the HILP and LILP subjects, prior knowledge had a significant impact on subjects' memory for information contained in the passage-independent test items on the postlecture comprehension test. Those EFL subjects who listened to the familiar-topic lecture on Confucius had higher passage-independent than passage-dependent scores. There was no difference in the performance on the passage-independent and passage-dependent items of those who listened to the lecture on an unfamiliar topic (the Amish). However, the passage-independent performance of subjects who listened to the familiar topic lecture was superior to that of those who listened to the lecture on the unfamiliar topic. Subjects' performance on passage-dependent items did not differ significantly whether the familiar or unfamiliar topic was presented. Implications of the findings for assessing and teaching EFL listening comprehension are suggested.

After reviewing research on native language (NL) listening, the article discusses (a) the importance of listening in second language acquisition, (b) factors that influence success or failure of comprehension of first or second language messages, (c) the role of listening in the L2 curriculum, (d) posited models of NL and L2 listening comprehension, and (e) proposed taxonomies of listening skills and pedagogical activities. The essay argues that researchers and practitioners working together can foster greater understanding of L2 listening comprehension; it is hoped that such collaborations will lead to better preparation of nonnative speakers of English who must function effectively in a contemporary industrialized society that appears to be shifting increasingly toward the use of English, and simultaneously to be shifting away from literacy toward orality.

The lecture notes of 129 L1 and L2 students were examined in terms of five indexes for the content of notes: (a) the total number of words and notations, (b) the number of information units, (c) the number of test questions answerable from the notes, (d) the completeness of the notes, and (e) the efficiency of the notes. Three stepwise multiple regression analyses of the data were conducted to identify which of the indexes predicted achievement on the postlecture quiz covering lecture concepts and details for (a) the L1 note takers and the L2 note takers as a group, (b) the L1 note takers, and (c) the L2 note takers. Results suggest that L1/L2 note takers who scored high on the recognition measure compacted a large amount of the lecture material into propositional pieces of information and detected and recorded information that subsequently appeared on the postlecture quiz. Implications of the findings for pedagogy and note‐taking research are suggested.

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