Correct prosody or faster articulation? Exploring the factors impacting student L2 listening comprehension

Abstract

Given that many EFL learners tend to struggle with understanding spoken English, some scholars identified the pedagogical potential of shadowing and visual shadowing for improving listening comprehension. This paper explores whether dif ferent ar ticulation rates for visual shadowing af fect the improvement in EFL learners’ top-down and/or bottom-up processing, and how other factors such as improvement in prosody or articulation rates influence student English listening comprehension. Given that some research findings from this study （i.e. shadowing helped both higher and lower proficiency learners） contradict the major research findings on shadowing, the author analyzes the potential factors that led to these discrepancies.