Listening comprehension has become a central issue in the field of second and foreign language learning; however, it is still the least understood skill compared to other language skills (Feyten, 1991; Nunan, 1999; Vandergrift, 2004, 2007). A growing number of researchers have been exploring the nature of listening by examining the effect of specific factors on listening comprehension. In terms of unidirectional listening, the factors consist of listener factors and text factors. For the listener factors, grammatical knowledge (Mecartty, 2000), vocabulary knowledge (Kelly, 1991; Mecartty, 2000; Lin, 2005), background knowledge (Chang & Read, 2006; Chiang & Dunkel, 1992;Dunkel, 1986; Hu, 2000; Jensen & Hansen, 1995; Lai, 2004; Long, 1990; Markham & Latham, 1987; Schmidt,1994; Yang, 2002) and anxiety level (Vogely, 1998; Cheng, 2005; Lin, 2005; Elkhafaifi, 2005) have been studied. As for the text factors, syntactical complexity (Blau, 1988; Cervantes &
Gainer, 1992; Teng, 2001b), repetition (Chang, 1999; Chang & Read, 2007; Chaudron, 1983; Chiang & Dunkel, 1992; Cervantes & Gainer, 1992; Jensen & Vinther, 2003;
Parker & Chaudron, 1987), pauses (Blau, 1990) have been given a good deal of attention. While studies on these factors have reached a rather satisfactory conclusion since there were consistent results across studies, the speech rate factor, one of the temporal variables, has yielded contradictory outcomes. In other words, the effect of speech rate on listening comprehension has not yet arrived at a satisfactory conclusion, thus demanding a closer examination.
It is commonly assumed that the slowed-down speech rate would facilitate
listening comprehension; nevertheless, a comparison of the empirical research has shown that it is a highly-debated and unsettled issue. Whereas some researchers advocated that the slowed-down speech rate would facilitate listening comprehension (Conrad, 1989; Griffiths, 1990b; 1991a; Zhao, 1997; Teng, 2002), other researchers stated that the speech rate would only become a facilitator in listening comprehension when it interacted with other variables (Blau, 1990; King & Behnke, 1989; Anderson
& Koehler, 1988; Rader, 1991). This diverted outcome was attributed from two critical, and yet overlooked elements in the previous rate studies.
The first overlooked element was that the speech rate categorization, used as a standard to categorize speech rate as fast or slow, varied from study to study, impeding the comparison between rate studies. Although some rate studies
(Dunkel.1988; Teng, 2002) did adopt the same speech rate categorization mapped out by Pimsleur’s (1977), it was a questionable adoption (Allison and Tauroza, 1990) because Pimsleur’s speech rate categorization, measured on the basis of both English and French speakers, was applied in the listening materials that were delivered by English speakers. Building on the fact that speech rate would vary from language to language, the adoption was apparently inadequate. In addition, the standard speech rate categorization might vary with text types. However, as found in Dunkel’s study (1988), the speech rate of lectures was categorized based on the speech rate
categorization measured by Pimsleur et al. (1977) using broadcast news. This application was therefore illegitimate.
The second neglected element was the instrument used to alter the speech rate in the previous rate studies. A “live-voice” was often used to change the speech rate of the same listening text, but this method cannot guarantee a high precision of the adjusted speech rate, which is a prerequisite for obtaining a valid outcome that would withstand the test of time.
A speech rate categorization used as a standard to categorize the speech rate and a rate adjustment instrument employed as a tool to alter the speech rare were carefully treated in this study, which allows closer examination and fuller exploration of the effect of the speech rate on listening comprehension.
Among all modes of speech rates, the effect of slowed-down speech rate on increasing language learners’ listening comprehension is believed by many. However, when it came to the use of it in authentic material, the viewpoints differed. According to Vandergrift (2007), the speech rate in authentic material should not be modified for the purpose of keeping the authentic quality. This study, though, proposed that the increased listening comprehension resulting from slowing down the speech rate is more important than simply keeping the authentic quality. It is definite that the authentic quality should not be dismissed; nevertheless, it might be more essential to increase language learners’ listening comprehension of authentic materials. The significance of authentic material that equips learners’ real-life language proficiency (Richards, 2006; Vandergrift, 2007) has received strong supports from teachers and researchers. Additionally, language learners often comments on the authentic material as the most difficult material. By slowing down the speech rate of authentic material, language learners’ might find the authentic material less intimidating.
The major challenge among all kinds of authentic materials faced by the language learners was the news genre (Kim, 2002; Robin, 2007; Shohamy&Inbar 1991; Weissenrieder, 1987) due to the fact that news is a specialized register with heavy cultural reference, rich vocabulary, and, the most evident of all, the rather fast speech flow. Based on the studies done by Kim (2002), Su (2007), and Vogely (1998), the delivery speed is one of the main factors that raised the students’ anxiety, thus debilitating listening comprehension, which is especially true for low proficiency learners as demonstrated by Buck’s (2001) analysis on the listening parts in TOEIC
(Test of English as an International Communication) that the ability to process faster input represents higher proficiency. This suggests that the authentic news with slowed-down speech rate could be easier to follow, especially for language learners with lower proficiency levels.
In summary, the authentic material is a great challenge, and yet an important input for language learning. The enhanced listening comprehension attributed from slowing down the speech rate of authentic material is thus probably more fundamental than simply keeping the authentic quality, which is even more true to the low
proficiency learners, who might fail to keep up with the speech rate of the authentic material.
The sped-up speech, compared to the slowed-down speech rate, has not received due attention because of the prevailing focus on the comprehensible input proposed by Krashen (1982) in the field of language teaching and learning. However, in order to improve the language learners’ listening comprehension ability of authentic texts delivered at the average speech rate, the idea of sped-up speech transformed to the gradually-increasing speech rate as a training technique is not a novel idea. Friedman and Johnson (1971), and Huberman and Medish (1974) already reported the use of the gradually-increasing speech rate in the rate-controlled training intended to improve the trainees’ listening comprehension performance of broadcast news at the average speech rate. Nevertheless, of these two studies that utilized this special rate-controlled technique to improve language learners’ listening comprehension ability, both yielded unsatisfactory results.
In Friedman and Johnson’s (1971) study, they asserted that their measurements of listening comprehension in the study were too broad to get possible differences in listening comprehension between the group with rate-controlled training and the group without. As for the study done by Huberman and Medish (1974), the results
could not validate the individual effect of slowed-down speech rate on listening comprehension (Griffiths, 1990a). Apart from the unsatisfactory outcome, these two studies date back to three decades ago. An update is necessarily needed. Moreover, even though the conclusion made in theses studies was based on experiment results, the experiments were completely descriptive in nature, as shown by the absence of the speech rate categorization for slow and average speech rate. Friedman and Johnson (1971) themselves stated in the beginning of their paper: “It is my intention to inform you this and to suggest some possible uses […] in the hope that some will indeed prove [the rate-controlled technique] useful to second language learning” (p.157). In light of this gap in research, this study attempts to gain a better understanding of the effect of the gradually-increasing speech rate on listening comprehension.