The Effect of Audio and Video Modality on Perception of Reduced Forms: The Role of Web-Based Instruction – Reduced Forms in an L2 Listening Context

Introduction

Today’s intelligent design of multimedia enables people to interact and communicate with other people across the globe through various apps and social media platforms. The use of multimedia in the field of English Language Teaching and its inevitable integration into the English as a Second Language (ESL) / English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classes have entailed the adoption of a variety of instructional practices into the skill-based teaching processes. Given the four components of language skills as reading, writing, and speaking, listening is high of great importance at the outset of second language acquisition as well as the perception of natural speech. Furthermore, it is the listening skill that allows listeners the right conditions not only for language acquisition but also for the development of other language skills (Hasan, 2000). The power of listening is illustrated by Feyten (1991), stating that listening provides the highest proportion of our total communication as 45%, speaking 30%, reading 16%, and writing 9%, respectively. However, this is “the least understood and the least researched skill” compared to the other language skills. (O’Bryan & Hegelheimer, 2009; Vandergrift, 2004, 2007).

In relation to language learners’ development of listening skills, the notion of suprasegmental features plays a crucial role. The features are the integral parts of the language components such as contraction, assimilation, flap, elision, and linking accompanying consonants and vowels. Because these features include syllables, words, or phrases, and they are not restricted to single sounds, the perception of the natural speech along with a single, or several enunciated features is highly challenging on the part of the learners to perceive and segment the words within a sentence. Because the spoken discourse is quite fast, the listener is supposed to perceive and process it online. Therefore, instruction designed particularly on RFs would be a plausible option to improve L2 learners listening development.

In relation to the incorporation of RFs in instructional materials, the negligence of both studies and materials on RFs is clearly highlighted by several scholars such as Brouwer (2010), Ur (1984), Rosa (2002). To our knowledge, so far, no comprehensive research study has been conducted incorporating several RFs through idea units in sentences. Rosa (2002) stresses that “very little material is available on the systematic use of RFs” (p. 57). An examination of the materials teaching listening and pronunciation reveals a dearth RFs (Celce-Murcia; 2011; Lodge, 2009, Roach, 2009; Shin, Sung, 2019). If they are covered at all, most provide a few of them, not a comprehensive of all information regarding RFs. Furthermore, almost in all of them “flap”, one of the RFs is missing. The coverage of the RFs in most ESL materials is composed of the amalgamation of RFs, yet various practice samples of flap, a comprehensive one including all in one instructional material, and the linguistic and/or pragmatic constraints of usage are not specifically addressed. Furthermore, flap is identified as the most difficult one to recognize by ESL learners (Matsuzawa, 2006). This is an area of research that is definitely limited with respect to covering five RFs, namely, contraction, assimilation, flap, elision and linking. The RFs illustrated above have been indicated by the research (Rosa, 2002; Brown, 2006; Brown et al., 2006; Matsuzawa, 2006; Aquil, 2012; Underwood, 2012) that L2 learners are constrained to identify words in a speech that causes obstacle in listening comprehension as well.