Effects of visual accompaniment on listening comprehension among L2 English learners

Listening comprehension is an integral part of second-language learning and one of the more important input skills in the Swedish upper-secondary English curriculum. While visual support, such as captions, has been shown to improve understanding, an online trend of using videos, unrelated to the spoken narration, to catch and hold attention might be used to further improve it. This study investigates how these two types of visual accompaniment affect immediate comprehension of spoken English among Swedish upper-secondary students. It compares how three different types of input condition (audio-only, captioned, and unrelated gameplay-video) affect comprehension. Additionally, a secondary goal of measuring how these types of input affect attention is included. Fifty-four students from an upper-secondary school in Stockholm, all aged between 15–16, were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions. Every group watched or listened to a three-minute clip followed by a multiple-choice comprehension test. Data analysis was done by comparing comprehension across groups using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The results showed that the inclusion of both captions and unrelated visual stimulus resulted in higher listening comprehension among learners. Between the other conditions, no statistical significance was found. Participants felt that focus was affected positively in both experimental conditions.