This study explores whether discourse markers play a role in L2 listening comprehension and whether software programs make a difference in L2 listening comprehension. Two groups of approximately 25 freshman students listened to two versions of three different talks with and without higher order discourse markers. The talks were delivered by a native speaker, a non-native speaker and by a softwa...

In this article the importance of listening comprehension for language students is discussed and the possible benefits of using a mobile app to motivate its practice and development are considered. The Audio News Trainer (ANT) is presented as an example of this type of app that uses the news domain as the source of audio recordings. Three research questions related to the use of this app are ou...

The present study investigated the use of the Reading Component Model to subgroup poor readers. A large sample of poor readers was identified in second grade and subgrouped on the basis of relative strengths and weaknesses in word recognition and listening comprehension. Although homogeneous subgroups were not identified, poor readers could be classified into four subgroups that differed signif...

The present study investigated the potential of implementing reading strategy instruction in raising learner readers' awareness of reading strategies,  extending the range of strategies they employed and enhancing their reading comprehension ability. To conduct the study, 90 female pre-university students majoring in Natural Sciences were selected based on a convenient sampling procedure. After...

Listening taking over half of the learners’ time and effort (Nunan, 1998), forms a basis for acquiring much of a language. There are factors affecting listening comprehension and its perception, such as the speech rate, phonological properties of the text, the quality of the recording, the learners’ anxiety, and listening comprehension strategies (Goh, 2000; Hamouda, 2013). At the Iran Language...

Listening was once believed to be a passive one-way comprehensive process. However, with the development of language teaching, listening comprehension is found to be an interactive process of two-way communication, during which listeners’ background knowledge play an important role. Schema theory lays theoretical foundation for this explanation. Based on this, the author designs a Schema Theory...

This quasi-experimental study aimed to compare the effect of different modes and item types of multiple-choice (MC) test items on advanced EFL learners’ listening comprehension and perception. To this end, 80 advanced EFL learners, aging 18 to 30, were selected. The participants took a listening test including dialogue-completion and question and answer multiple-choice items presented in writte...

This study investigates a novel method of captioning, partial and synchronized, as a listening tool for second language (L2) learners. In this method, the term partial and synchronized caption (PSC) pertains to the presence of a selected set of words in a caption where words are synced to their corresponding speech signal, using a state-of-the-art automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. ...