Effect of Input Mode on EFL Free-Recall Listening Performance: A Mixed-Method Study

Abstract

This study conducted a mixed-method study of the influence of audio and video input mode on free-recalllistening performance. It first explored quantitatively whether input mode significantly influenced 34sophomores’ performance in general and across two genres (passage and long dialogue) and three ranks ofidea units (the discourse topic, main point, and supporting detail). Then it investigated qualitatively howfour of the participants interacted with the audio and video input. T-test results showed the video modesignificantly facilitated listening performance in general and for long dialogue in particular, as well as therecall of supporting details for long dialogue. Qualitative findings revealed that the participants’interaction with the video varied with their language proficiency and the visual-verbal relationship in theinput, suggesting the threshold of language proficiency for the visuals to take effect and the interveningeffect of visual input and task features.© 2019 EJAL & the Authors. Published by Eurasian Journal of Applied Linguistics (EJAL). This is an open-accessarticle distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-NC-ND)(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).