| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系 === 91 === Audiolingual Method (ALM) has been welcomed for decades by language instructors in Taiwan to train learners of English as Foreign Language (EFL) to be familiar with dialogues and sentence patterns rapidly. The developments of General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) and Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) have also combined pictorial aids as visual cues and aural materials in language listening drills and tests. This brought about language teachers’ concern about the effects of visual aids used on English listening comprehension.
This study aimed at exploring the effects of pictorial aids as visual cues on improving low-achieving learners’ English language listening comprehension. Ninety-eight subjects from the Statistics department were pretested to make sure they had the similar entry level before the treatment. These subjects were then allocated into three groups and were treated in different methods: one experimental group in fully immersion in pictorial aids, another experimental group in both pictorial aids and written texts, and the control group in normal treatments which played tapes without the emphasis of visual aids during the listening comprehension instruction. Data were collected and analyzed from the four achievement tests in listening, subjects’ learning preference survey, and a questionnaire. The T test and the one-way ANOVA were separately utilized to examine the gain scores of two pairs of the pretests and the posttests within groups and among groups.
The results showed that the uses of pictorial aids as visual cues indeed enhanced the subjects’ listening comprehension in English. Moreover, according to the subjects’ responses to the questionnaire, they preferred to use pictorial aids before and during listening to aural texts rather than after the aural texts. The most appropriate numbers and types of pictorial aids should be between one and three as suggested by the subjects. Plus, the aural materials with meaningful contents and with pictorial aids might appeal to the subjects and stimulate their motivation to learn. Pictorial aids as well as written texts used during English listening comprehension instruction benefited the subjects most.
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