Explaining L2 learners’ listening comprehension: The role of aural vocabulary knowledge

Abstract

Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in predicting L2 learners’ listening comprehension. Written vocabulary tests have long been used to measure L2 learners’ vocabulary knowledge in studies on listening comprehension, while a limited number of studies have investigated the role of aural vocabulary knowledge to explain success in L2 listening. The current study adopts an aural receptive vocabulary test to measure L2 learners’ vocabulary knowledge and a listening task to measure their L2 listening comprehension proficiency. The results show that L2 learners’ aural vocabulary knowledge significantly correlates with their listening proficiency. Although learners’ aural word knowledge at each frequency level (from 1K to 5K) and their academic word knowledge were significantly correlated with L2 listening, the strongest correlation was between academic vocabulary knowledge and listening, followed by that between word knowledge at the 5K frequency level and listening. In terms of the contribution of aural vocabulary knowledge to L2 listening, the scores achieved for the academic word knowledge measure alone explain 22% of the variance in L2 listening, and the scores achieved for the 5K word frequency level measure alone explain 16.7% of such variance. Learners’ academic vocabulary knowledge is found to explain unique variance over and above their vocabulary knowledge at the 5K word frequency level in L2 listening.

Keywords

• l2 listening comprehension; aural vocabulary knowledge; word frequency level.