An Exploratory Study of Effects of Lecture's Acoustic Features on L1 Chinese Listeners' Listening Comprehension of Online L2 English Lectures

This study explored the effects of lecture speech rate and duration on L1 Chinese listeners' listening comprehension of online L2 English lectures on free-recall and cued-recall questions. There are many factors that may affect a Chinese listener's listening comprehension of online English lectures. The current study focused specifically on the effects of speech rate and duration, and explored the possibility of identifying tools that listeners might use to control these factors during online lectures in order to achieve better learning experiences. Using an exploratory quasi-experimental approach, this study explored the research questions in three phases: 1) An initial quasi-experiment was conducted via Qualtrics and applied as a pilot study; 2) The quasi-experiment was revised, with a new link sent out to potential participants from both the United States and China; and 3) Quasi-experiment responses were collected and analyzed. Based on 28 participant responses, the findings from the current study suggest that the interaction between speech rate and duration impacted L1 Chinese listener's comprehension of online L2 English lectures. The findings also suggest that study participants' responses on various types of questions were affected differently by the speech rate and duration of the lectures.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Department dc:contributor.department

Education, Vocational-Technical

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Huang, Jingjing

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Potter, Kenneth R.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Cennamo, Katherine S.
• Johnson, Alicia Leinaala
• Lockee, Barbara B.

• Speech rate
• duration
• listening comprehension
• free-recall questions
• cued-recall questions
• L1 Chinese learner
• L2 English lecture

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:30193

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/112765