The effect of rate of speech and distributed practice on the development of listening comprehension

Abstract This study investigated the effects of training learners of English as a foreign language with different rates of speech and controls over speech rate. Subjects were put into one of four treatment groups: (A) trained on listening comprehension materials recorded at a fast speed, (B) trained on slow recordings, (C) given some choice about the speed, and (D) allowed sometimes to pause playback. The group that was trained on slow materials fared the best, apparently because their bottom-up processing improved. Other groups seem to have developed their strategic listening skills more, but these did not always transfer as well to other contexts. It was also found that learners performed better when they paced their training over several days. Keywords: listening comprehensionCALL designdistributed practicerate of speech Acknowledgements This study was funded by the TESOL International Research Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant and by a grant from the Tinker Foundation. The author also wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this article. Notes 1. Griffiths (1990) used 100 words per minute for slow speech and 200 for fast speech; Blau (1990) used 145 and 180; while Rader (1990) used 108–122 wpm and 153–160. 2. Two rules guided group assignment: first, to alternate in order (one participant in A, the next in B, etc.). At the same time, I tried to have an equal number, in each experimental group, of high-, average-, and low-scorers on the LC pre-test, as well as an equal number of people in each group who had taken Versions A and B of the pre-test. 3. All other words in the materials appeared in the Academic Word List (Coxhead, 1997) or (twice) they were pictured in the accompanying illustration, or they were cognates with Spanish words, borrowed words, interjections (e.g. "hmm"), or proper nouns. 4. Readers are encouraged to try some examples at the following website http://www.u.arizona.edu/∼kforster/MAZE/start.htm. 5. The degrees of freedom are different here because maze pre-test scores were lost for three subjects, due to a problem with the network server.