What makes listening difficult? Factors affecting second language listening comprehension

Abstract

Factors affecting second language listening comprehension gies-that is, those who are aware of and use effective strategies, such as avoiding mental translation-demonstrate better L2 listening comprehension. 2 In addition to these general cognitive abilities, a number of factors pertaining to experience with the L2 influence listening skill. These factors include the amount of prior exposure to the language; familiarity with and an ability to understand the non-native language's phonology; vocabulary size; and background knowledge about the topic, text, structure, schema, and culture.Familiarity with the L2 changes the extent to which the L2 listener uses top-down or bottom-up strategies in listening. For example, expert listeners use both types of strategies: They are able to accurately make sense of the speech signal (bottom-up information) 3 and integrate this information with PurPose-To establish what is currently known about factors that affect foreign language listening comprehension, with a focus on characteristics of the listener, passage, and testing conditions.ConClusions-Research on second language (L2) listening comprehension strongly supports the importance of a number of factors, for example, a listener's working memory capacity and the number of ideas in a passage. Much of the research, however, reports weak or inconclusive results, leaving many factors and complex interactions among factors unresolved and in need of further investigation.relevanCe-Identifying the factors that affect L2 listening comprehension will help Defense Language Institute Proficiency Test (DLPT) designers anticipate how qualities of selected authentic materials will impact listening comprehension. Executive Summary PurPoseThe U.S. Government administers the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) to military linguists and other government personnel to assess their listening and reading comprehension in a number of foreign languages, including critical languages such as Mandarin, Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Persian Farsi. The DLPT is updated every 10 to 15 years, and the most recent transition-from DLPT IV to DLPT5-included a greater emphasis on testing listening comprehension with authentic materials. In turn, this has led to a growing interest in the factors that make second language (L2) listening difficult.To examine these factors, CASL reviewed the current scientific literature and summarized the characteristics of listeners, passages, and testing conditions. The review targeted features of particular interest to stakeholders at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). The long-term goal of the project is to support the selection of authentic listening materials that accurately reflect different proficiency levels. ConClusionsAlthough the available research on L2 listening comprehension is limited, CASL's literature review identified several factors that affect listening comprehension. These factors are summarized below and in Tables 1, 2, and 3. 1 Characteristics of the listenerUnderstanding a fo...

The Role of Task and Listener Characteristics in Second Language Listening

“…For a more extensive review, we refer the reader to Bloomfield et al. () and Révész and Brunfaut ().…”

“…A number of factors associated with the characteristics of the listening task and the listener have been proposed, and some demonstrated, to determine listening difficulty. Among the listening task factors that have been investigated are task input variables such as passage length, speech rate, linguistic complexity, and text content; variables related to task procedures, such as the nature of the task instructions and the number of times listening; and task response characteristics such as the item type, or the length and complexity of the required response (for comprehensive reviews, see Bloomfield et al., ; Vandergrift, ). Only a handful of empirical studies have dealt with listener‐related characteristics.…”

Group dynamic assessment of EFL listening comprehension: Conversational implicatures in focus

“…However, it seems little attention is given to the diagnostic and dynamic assessment of this language skill (Ableeva, 2010). Language learners have often perceived listening comprehension to be the most difficult language skill to learn (Graham, 2006), yet worse the assessment of this skill has always haunted them (Bloomfield, Wayland, Rhoades, Blodgett, Linck, & Ross, 2011). The recent pedagogical applications of Dynamic Assessment (DA) rooted in Vygotskian Socio-Cultural Theory (SCT), serving as both an instructional and an evaluative tool seems to have opened new horizons for teaching and assessment of listening comprehension.…”

Evidence for language transfer leading to a perceptual advantage for non-native listeners

“…Compared to native speakers, non-native speakers who learn a given language after childhood tend to be substantially worse in terms of listening skills across a range of conditions (N ab elek and Donahue, 1984;Bradlow and Pisoni, 1999;Garcia Lecumberri and Cooke, 2006;Cutler et al, 2008). Comprehension of a non-native language can be challenging for a variety of reasons, including cognitive constraints and incomplete knowledge of the vocabulary, grammar, and culture (Goh, 2000;Bloomfield et al, 2011). At the level of speech sounds specifically, perhaps no factor is as widely recognized as cause for non-native difficulty as phonological interference, or transfer, from the native language.…”