The impact of context and content visuals in multi-modal input on efl academic listening comprehension

The purpose of this dissertation study is to investigate the impact of context and content visuals in multi-modal inputs on English as a foreign language students' academic listening comprehension. The study specifically aimed to examine; a) whether there exists a difference in EFL students' listening performance on five listening subtests, namely, audio-only mode, audio with context visuals mode, audio with content visuals mode, video with context visuals mode, and video with content visuals mode, b) whether individual differences, that is English language proficiency level, gender, and students' listening style, affect EFL students' academic listening comprehension. In doing so, various data were collected through four types of data collection instruments. First, EFL students' personal information was collected by a demographic information questionnaire, second, their listening styles were identified by EFL Listening Style Scale, then, their listening test scores on five different input modes (audio-only, audio with context visuals, audio with content visuals, video with context visuals, and video with content visuals) were collected by two listening tests, and finally, their opinions about the listening tests gathered by semi-structured group interview were determined. One hundred-twenty-seven EFL students from an English Language Institute of a private university in Istanbul, Turkey participated in this study. The findings of the present study demonstrated that the inclusion of nonverbal information, whether context or content, via audio and video input modes in an academic listening comprehension test has a positive effect, compared to audio-only mode, on EFL students' academic listening comprehension. Moreover, although the EFL students' English language proficiency levels have different effects on their listening performance to varying degrees, their gender and listening styles do not have any effect on their academic listening performance. The findings of the study provide significant practical and pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, ELT publishers, and test designers with respect to English language listening skill instruction, designing English language teaching materials, and developing English language listening tests.