The Effectiveness of Shadow-Reading With and Without Written Script on Listening Comprehension of Iranian Intermediate EFL Students.

Listening comprehension is at the heart of language learning (Kurita, 2012). It is an importantlanguage skill to develop in terms of second language acquisition (SLA) (Dunkel, 1991; Rost,2001; Vandergrift, 2007).In spite of its importance, L2 learners often regard listening as themost difficult language skill to learn. In this study, shadowing as an act or task in listening, inwhich the learner tracks the target speech and repeats it immediately as exactly as possible, isrecommended to enhance the students’ listening comprehension skills. More specifically, thisstudy aimed at investigating the effect of shadowing with and without written script on theIranian EFL students’ listening comprehension. Seventy seven participants out of apopulation of ninety nine students were randomly picked through the administration ofPreliminary English Test (PET). The participants were three groups of intermediate level.The First group, did shadow-reading as the first experimental group with written script (groupA); the second group, who did shadow-reading as the second experimental group withoutwritten script (group B); and the third, who acted as the control group (group C or nonshadowing).The data were collected through the administration of a pre- test and a post-test.The analysis of the test scores, using a one-way ANOVA, revealed that the experimentalgroups (A & B) performed statistically better in the test. It also revealed that the shadowingwith written script group performed statistically better than the without written script group.