Second Language Listening Comprehension Gain From Aural vs. Audio-Visual Inputs: The Case of EFL Arab Learners

Abstract

This study aims at finding out which medium is best for the acquisition of L2 listening skills, aural or audio-visual listening comprehension. Sixty EFL Arab learners were asked to sit for pre- and post-tests. The post-test proved a significant improvement in the performance of the students of the experimental group who were exposed to audio-visual medium. This outperformance of the experimental group appeared in their ability to distinguish the meanings of several words in the pre- and post-tests. They were able to identify most of the L2 vocabulary, grammar and syntax because of using the audio-visual materials. The experimental group managed to understand the linguistic information and they were also able to answer the questions in both given tests correctly. On the contrary, the performance of the control group was clearly poor in terms of the L2 vocabulary, grammar and syntax and the reason is referring to the use of the traditional material which is the aural one. The subjects of the experimental group were interested in learning listening by using audio-visual materials because it helps them to develop the listening skills faster, unlike the subjects of the control group. Therefore, the results show that multimedia is effective in enhancing the skills of listening comprehension of female Saudi EFL learners.