How Effective are Wordlists for Listening to Authentic Foreign Language News Broadcasts?

Due to the difficulty that Japanese learners may face in understanding the gist of authentic British and American TV broadcasts, their instructors often believe that transcripts from the listening content should be available beforehand. However, there is reason to believe that such assistance does not challenge learners sufficiently to exercise their listening ability for ultimately understanding the gist of a passage. On the other hand, offering no support at all during especially authentic listening tasks could drain learner confidence and motivation. With these assumptions in mind, an experiment was conducted to see if a wordlist given to students would be a more effective alternative that aids learner comprehension without reducing the need to utilize aural skills. The results indicate that this pre-listening activity is inadequate for learners who are required to actively show how well they understand the main idea from authentic listening input. The author suggests that they are often not capable of digesting and making good use of the vocabulary they are given without more extensive practice and constructive exposure. 因為日本學習者也許在理解英國以及美國電視內容主旨要點上會有所困難，他們的老師通常認為在聽之前，必須提供給學生相關內容的文本。然而也有理由相信，這樣的輔助並不能充分地刺激學生們運用他們的聽力，以來理解一篇文本的要旨。另一方面，在真實的聽力活動中，完全沒有提供輔助，卻也會削減學習者的信心以及動機。基於這些假設，所以本研究施行一個實驗來探討，提供單字表是否為一個更有效的方式來增進學習者的理解力，亦無降低增進聽力的需要。結果顯示對於需要主動表現出對真實的聽力內容有所理解的學習者而言，此一聽前的活動並不足夠。作者指出，學習者通常無法消化以及善用所提供的單字表於延伸練習以及結構性的認識。