PhD Abstract

Anthony J. Lynch, PhD thesis - University of Edinburgh , 1988.

There have been two basic approaches to the construction of listening comprehension materials for elementary-level foreign language (L2) learners. The conventional method was to grade the text — by recording texts scripted to contain simple lexis and syntax. Recently, many course writers have preferred instead to use recordings of ‘authentic' speech (that is, speech by and for native speakers) and to balance the relative complexity of such language for foreign listeners by grading the task — reducing the degree of difficulty of the comprehension exercises that the learners are required to carry out.

This study investigates an alternative procedure for grading listening materials. It draws principally on psycholinguistic research into L2 comprehension and on studies of native-nonnative discourse. It explores the possibility of recording spoken texts under conditions in which ‘ natural grading ' might occur, namely where native speakers might be expected to adopt spontaneous modifications of discourse in order to enable a nonnative interlocutor to understand.

A two-stage experiment was designed to test whether native speakers would produce differential degrees of modification to individual listeners at four levels of proficiency in English (native, advanced, intermediate and elementary) and whether such modifications would also benefit ‘secondary' listeners — elementary-level learners of English watching a videorecording of the original interaction.

The results indicate that (1) native speakers do indeed adjust their level of language to suit the comprehension level of their discourse partner, and that (2) versions of a text produced for an interlocutor of the same level as the ‘secondary' audience are more comprehensible than those told to native listeners. This supports the claim that, under the specific conditions of interaction described in the study, the proposed method of collecting unscripted conversation offers a means of creating, or eliciting, naturally graded listening materials for use in the foreign language classroom.