This study examined the effect of two different authentic topic-familiar rhetorical L2 listening tasks (expository and argumentative) differing in reasoning demand on the listening comprehension scores of a number of Iranian EFL advanced learners. Sixty homogeneous advanced learners were recruited based on their performance on an English Language Proficiency test (Fowler & Coe, 1976). Then they...

Studies have shown that older listeners with normal hearing have greater difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments than younger listeners even during simple assessments where listeners respond to auditory stimuli immediately after presentation. Older listeners may have increased difficulty understanding speech in challenging listening situations that require the recall of prior sent...

The present study examined the impact of visualization and graphic organizers as pre-listening strategies on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement and their listening comprehension. To do so, this study was carried out in three listening classes at Islamic Azad University of Mashhad. The participants included 80 junior EFL university stude...

Language is lateralised to the left hemisphere in most people, but it is unclear whether the same degree and direction of lateralisation is found for all verbal tasks and whether laterality is affected by task difficulty. We used functional transcranial Doppler ultrasonography (fTCD) to assess the lateralisation of language processing in 27 young adults using three tasks: word generation (WG), ...

The pivotal role of listening comprehension in second/foreign language learning requires that researchers conduct studies which investigate factors that affect test takers’ performances. The present study was set out to examine whether item modality (i.e., written vs. oral items) affects listening comprehension test performance. In addition, it investigated whether allowing test takers to take ...

In this paper we present a real-world application (the first of its kind) of machine listening in the context of a live concert in a world-famous concert hall – the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. A real-time music tracking algorithm listens to the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performing Richard Strauss’ Alpensinfonie and follows the progress in the sheet music, i.e., continuously tracks the most ...

Dichotic listening (DL) procedures are commonly employed in the evaluation of auditory processing in children. Review of the various clinical tests reveals considerable diversity in both the signals employed and their mode of administration. The extent to which other non auditory-specific factors influence the test outcome is often difficult to determine. Individual differences in memory, atten...

: This study aims to apply active learning in a foreign language context to improve L2 learners’ listening comprehension. Participants in this attempt were 56 EFL learners between 13 and 15 years old. To amass the required data, learners went through a ten-week treatment, in which participants in the experimental group received computer-mediated active learning intervention and...

Improving listening comprehension skill is one of the urgent contemporary educational needs in the field of second language acquisition and metacognitive strategies are proved to help learners manage and self-regulate their listening and overcome deficiencies. Although metacognitive instruction is underscored by previous research, task-based metacognitive instruction is seriously underresearche...

This study investigated the effects of captioned texts on second/foreign (L2) listening comprehension and vocabulary gains using a computer multimedia program. Additionally, it explored the caption ordering effect (i.e. captions displayed during the first or second listening), and the interaction of captioning order with the L2 proficiency level of language learners in listening comprehension a...