Redefining the L2 Listening Construct Within an Integrated Writing Task: Considering the Impacts of Visual-Cue Interpretation and Note-Taking

Researchers debate whether listening tasks should be supported by visuals. Most empirical research in this area has been conducted on the effects of visual support on listening comprehension tasks employing multiple-choice questions. The present study seeks to expand this research by investigating the effects of video listening passages (vs. audio-only listening passages) on note-taking strategies and subsequent (integrated) writing task performance. Forty international students learning English at Michigan State University participated. Each wrote two English essays, 1 preceded by supporting video listening material and one by audio-only listening material with the order of presentation and the content of the listening material and writing task counter balanced (via Latin squares) to control for order and test-content effects. Participants completed an exit survey concerning their perceptions of the different tasks. Results indicate that there was no significant difference in performance between the two task types (video-based vs. audio-only-based); however, there was a significant difference in note-taking practices—as expected, when test takers watched the video, they took fewer notes. Qualitative data suggest that test takers had mixed perceptions of the usefulness of video. However, the majority of participants preferred the video-based task and believed that video helped them understand the listening passages.