The purpose of the present study was to determine whether integrating online audiovisual materials into the listening instruction of L2 French learners would have a measurable impact on their listening comprehension development. Students from two intact sections of second-semester French were tested on their listening comprehension before and after a four-week learning phase during which the treatment group received listening instruction via audiovisual materials while the control group completed a different listening task that did not involve audiovisual materials. Results from the pretest indicated that the two groups began the study at a nearly identical level of listening ability. The experimental group subsequently increased its listening proficiency in the immediate and delayed posttests, achieving considerably higher scores when compared to the control group. While the difference in scores on the posttests was not significant, effect sizes suggested a positive outcome for the experimental group. This study represents a preliminary indication that activities using online audiovisual materials may have a positive impact on the acquisition of listening comprehension skills.
The goal of the present study was to investigate the instructional potential of metacognitive strategies to improve listening comprehension and the automaticity of listening processes. A pretest—treatment—posttest design was adopted and used in seven sections of second‐semester French. Differences were found based on initial listening proficiency and metacognitive awareness: low proficiency learners in both conditions outperformed all high‐proficiency learners in listening gains over time. Initial level of metacognitive awareness had a significant impact on gains in listening performance: learners in the experimental group who began the study with low metacognitive awareness achieved higher gains in listening. These results indicate that the initial level of metacognitive awareness has a differential impact on listening comprehension gains, supporting the idea that increasing metacognition can help learners to improve listening skills.
Learning one's target language in a foreign language environment presents particular challenges for both the amount of L2 input and the opportunity to practice. When one considers additionally how little time is dedicated to pronunciation in the typical foreign language classroom (Olson, 2014), it seems inevitable that pronunciation would lag behind other skills in this instructional context. To address this skills gap, the instruction and assessment of pronunciation need to be prioritized in research and practice. In this paper we revisit the results of a longitudinal study following four L1 English learners of L2 French, designed to explore how the limited L2 exposure and pronunciation instruction of a foreign-language environment may impact pronunciation development. The results are reframed here as evidence of the adaptation and change that are characteristic of a developing complex dynamic system, leading to a discussion of alternative ways to present and analyze pronunciation data that consider the inherent variability and non-linearity of linguistic behavior.
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