A COMPARISON OF AUDIO-ONLY VERSUS
AUDIO-VISUAL SECOND LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION
IN FIRST-YEAR UNIVERSITY-LEVEL SPANISH by
TINA LYNN WARE, B.A., M.A.
A DISSERTATION
IN
SPANISH
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Approved
Accepted
December, 1998

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Professors Rosslyn Smith, Roman Taraban, Susan Stein,
Harley Oberhelman, Robert Stewart and Janet Perez for their guidance and helpful criticism. In addition, I would like to thank the staff of the Texas Tech
Language Learning Laboratory, especially Phade Vader and Karissa
Greathouse, for their technical assistance and for allowing me to conduct my experiment in the Language Learning Laboratory. Gratitude is expressed to Kim
Rynearson for her assistance with statistical analysis. Also, I thank Keith Landry and McGraw-Hill Publishers, Inc., for donating texts.
Most importantly, my deepest appreciation goes to my parents, Richard and Signa Ware, and my sister, Teresa Estep. Without their support and encouragement, this project would not have been possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS li
LIST OF TABLES v
CHAPTER
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 6
A Comparison of Reading and Listening Comprehension 6
Listening Comprehension 9
Video and Listening Comprehension 12
The Other Receptive Skill: Reading 17
First Language Reading Versus Second Language Reading 18
Use of Video for Acquisition of Listening and Reading
Skills in the Target Language 20
History of the Language Lab 22
Video in the Language Learning Laboratory 24
Guiding Principles 28
Statement of Hypotheses 31 ill. METHOD 33
Participants 36
Student Eligibility Requirements and Selection for the
Experiment 38
Materials 41
Teaching Procedure 46
Testing Procedure 50
Experimental Design 53
IV. RESULTS 57
Skill Data 57
Results of Pre- and Post-Test Surveys 59
Opinions About General Usefulness of the Language Learning
Laboratory 60
Students' Preferred Language Learning Laboratory Activity 62

Participants' Opinions About Audio-Only Treatment 63
Opinions About Preferred Activity for Building Listening and
Reading Skills 63
V. DISCUSSION 66
Tests for Skill 66
Reading Comprehension 66
Listening Comprehension 67
Listening/Reading Comprehension 73
Student Opinions about the Language Learning Laboratory 76
Significant Results 76
Students' Opinions About General Usefulness of
Language Lab 11
Students' Favored Language Lab Activities 78
Lab Activity Preferences for Listening and Reading
Comprehension 80
Non-Significant Results 81
VI. CONCLUSION 82
LITERATURE CITED 90
APPENDICES
A. PRE-TEST SURVEY 96
B. PRE-TEST DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONNAIRE 97
C. MID-TERM EXAM 98
D. FINAL EXAM 101
E. POST-TEST SURVEY 104
F. POST-TEST DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONNAIRE 105
G. GLOSSARY 107
IV

LIST OF TABLES
1. Demographic Information about Students 39
2. Previous Foreign Language Experience 40
3. Experimental Design 55
4. T-Tests for Skill 58
5. T-Tests for Likert Item Responses 61

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
During the second half of this century, the study of language acquisition has changed from its original emphasis on language teaching methodologies.
Since the late 1960s (Ellis, 1995), a number of studies have focused on second language learning, which "introduced a new research agenda and gave definition to the field that has come to be known as second language acquisition"
(Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991, p. 5). This new research agenda looks closely at learner styles and the learning process. Researchers have learned much of what we know about language acquisition in the three decades since the introduction of the field of second language acquisition, or SLA (Dulay, Burt &
Krashen, 1982; Ellis, 1995). Gass (1989) uses Ellis' (1985) definition of second language acquisition, which is "the study of how learners learn an additional language after they have acquired the mother tongue" ( p. 499). The findings of second language research aid foreign language instructors in the classroom because teachers who use these ideas are better able to meet the needs of their students.
When referring to a language other than the first language, usually a distinction is made between a second language and a foreign language. A second language is a language being acquired in the milieu in which it is the native tongue, such as English being studied by a Korean in England. A foreign

language is a language acquired outside of an environment where it is the native tongue, such as a Spaniard's study of French in Spain. Although some researchers choose to differentiate between a second language and a foreign language, "SLA has really come to mean the acquisition of any language(s) other than one's native language" (Larsen-Freeman & Long, 1991, p. 7).
For the past three and a half decades, research in the areas of second language learning and acquisition has abounded. Researchers are constantly studying new methods of language learning, which refers "to conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them" (Krashen, 1982, p. 10), to find those which are most efficacious in the second language student's endeavor to acquire the target language. In addition, researchers study language acquisition, which Krashen
(1982) describes as the subconscious knowledge of the target language.
Investigators in SLA study people at all ages and levels of language proficiency, from babies to adults and from novice to native speakers. Studies cover topics such as the effects of explicit grammar instruction versus implicit grammar instruction in the classroom, music as a tool for teaching intonation, total language immersion, first language acquisition versus second language acquisition and the impact of social factors on language learning.
Ellis (1995) points out that the heightened emphasis on second language acquisition research that began developing in the late 1960s has been devoted to studying acquisition of the target language in the classroom. Earlier research

on second language acquisition concentrated on learners in natural settings.
Currently, many researchers analyze learning conditions and situations that resemble the classroom setting (Ellis, 1995). Even with the new concentration on classroom second language learning, one area of classroom second language instruction which has often been overlooked in studies of university language students is the language learning laboratory. Although not studied seriously, the language lab has outlived many tools for second language instruction. It has also been incorporated into most of the current methods of language acquisition that incorporate forms of the Direct Method (defined in the
Appendix) as a means of classroom instruction.
Many colleges and universities that offer foreign language courses require their students to attend instructor-taught courses coupled with time spent in the school's language learning laboratory to enhance language skills. Time spent in the language lab usually allows students to work independently and at their own pace while in the classroom they must follow the pace set by the instructor. Until the 1980s, most language laboratory activities were based on
ALM (audio-lingual method). These exercises consisted of listening to dialogues and stories in the target language on cassette tapes and completing workbook exercises that followed along with the tapes. Colleges and universities such as the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at Arlington, Texas
A&M University in College Station and the Dallas County Community Colleges, as well as schools in the University of Illinois and University of Minnesota

systems, to name a few (Landry, 1997), have adopted new language learning laboratory materials to replace the audio cassette activities that accompany many foreign language textbooks such as Dos Mundos, the text used by Texas
Tech University (from 1994-present). These schools have begun to use an audio-visual language lab program, called Destines, which uses videocassette activities; this series closely resembles its predecessor, the French In Action
Series developed by Capretz (1988). Instead of listening to cassette tapes, students watch videos and follow along with workbook exercises. These videos follow a soap opera format, with thirty-minute episodes of a continuing story performed in formal and informal speech in the target language. During the videos, the story line stops frequently to allow for a summary of the action and introduction of new vocabulary presented in English. In addition, the differences between the various dialects and levels of language formality presented in the video are explained.
Both the French in Action Series and the Destines video programs were developed to improve listening comprehension skills among foreign language students of French and Spanish, respectively. Because both reading and watching videos are visual activities, current research (Secules, Herron &
Tomasello, 1992; Chung, 1994; Ciccone, 1995) favors video exercises over audio-lingual ones for building skills in reading comprehension as well.
My research question focuses on whether audio-only or audio-visual modes of language learning laboratory instruction more effectively aid university

students in building comprehension skills in reading, listening and the combination of listening and reading in the target language.
The Review of the Literature, Chapter II, is a review of the research about the skills of listening and reading individually, and in comparison with each other. This chapter also compares current research with previous findings about the use of video in the language lab. A brief history of the language learning laboratory appears as well.
Chapter III is a description of the methodology and an explanation of the components of the analysis, which include the materials used, demographic information about the participants, eligibility requirements, teaching and testing procedures and the experimental design of the study.
Chapter IV is a description of the results of the study, including the statistical analyses related to each of the three skills tested: listening, reading, and the combination of listening and reading. Participants' expressed preferences for language learning laboratory exercises, whether audio-only or audio-visual are also discussed.
Chapter V includes a discussion of the implications and possible explanations for the results of the investigation into using audio-only and audiovisual language learning laboratory activities to build skills in listening, reading and the combination of listening and reading. The conclusion. Chapter VI, summarizes the results of the experiment and suggests topics for future research.

CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
A Comparison of Reading and Listening Comprehension
When asked to name the elements of a language a linguist's typical response would be that four skills exist for each language: speaking, writing, listening and reading. Often, speaking and writing have been paired as the active skills and listening and reading as the "passive" skills (Oiler, 1973).
However, in the last two decades, listening and reading both have begun to receive recognition as receptive, active and conscious components of language
(Barnett, 1989; O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993; O'Malley, Chamot & Kupper, 1989) which require listeners and readers to actively "produce understanding" (Barnett,
1989, p. 2) of the oral and written messages they encounter. This research is diminishing the perception of listening and reading as passive skills.
On the surface, listening and reading seem like completely different mental processes. However, it is the experience of receiving written and oral language, not the comprehension process of oral and written messages, that presents disparities between listening and reading. Horowitz and Samuels
(1987) point out that listeners hear oral language, which is episodic, occurring in the present time, narrative and natural. In addition, these researchers point out that messages are implied with body language and intonation. Therefore,
"much can remain unsaid, ...oral language need not be explicit because these

nonverbal cues and the voice can convey considerable information which evokes the meanings that are normally carried by the written discourse" (p. 7).
Listeners and speakers generally share face-to-face interaction, while readers and the authors of a given text do not (Danks & End, 1987). Readers deal with written language which is" artificial...formal, academic, and planned; it hinges on the past and is reconstructed In such a way that in the future it can be processed by varied readerships" (Horowitz & Samuels, 1987, p.7). Written language is often affiliated with books and explanatory prose regularly found in academic settings (Horowitz & Samuels, 1987) and has been called "the most elaborate form of language" (Benson, 1995, p. 2). In a testing situation, readers have more control over written language than listeners have over oral language.
Readers can read a text several times while listeners do not have the opportunity to hear a passage as many times as they desire, nor can they stop during a listening exercise to explore a new word or phrase (Danks & End,
1987). Reading and listening vary where the linguistic stimulus is concerned.
Reading employs a visual stimulus while listening relies on an auditory one; both skills are independent of each other (Townsend, Carrithers & Bever, 1987).
With the differences in decoding oral and written language, it is possible to believe that reading and listening have nothing more in common than their classification as receptive language skills.
Nevertheless, convincing research exists which shows the similarities between listening and reading, especially where comprehension is concerned. In

addition to their common, but misleading, label as the "passive" skills (Barnett,
1989), listening and reading are language components which require comprehension rather than production. Both skills make use of cognitive structure during the comprehension process (Danks & End, 1987). Lund (1991) defines comprehension as the "construction of meaning using both the decoded language and the comprehender's prior knowledge" (p. 196). Readers and listeners both must decode the written and oral messages they encounter in order to understand them. Reading and listening share congruent processing strategies which include looking or listening for familiar words, attempting to grasp the general concept of the passage and expressing a sense of satisfaction with the ability to understand the message (Bacon & Finneman, 1990).
According to O'Maggio-Hadley (1993), listening and reading comprehension share the goal of not only deciphering the intended message but also knowing how to respond to it.
Both listeners and readers employ top-down and bottom-up processing in their decoding procedures. Morley (1990) describes top-down, or conceptuallydriven, processing as being "evoked from an internal source, from a bank of prior knowledge and global expectations about the language 'world'" (p. 331).
As listeners/readers are presented with a message, they use their general understanding of it and work towards a more specific knowledge of the message.
O'Maggio-Hadley (1993) describes a reader's top-down processing experience as one in which a reader begins with a global understanding of a topic and
8

works down to the precise elements of the passage, such as words and syntax.
Background information, or available knowledge, coupled with "insufficient linguistic skills may bias the reader towards top-down processing" (Kozminsky &
Graetz, 1986, p. 6).
Bottom-up, or data-driven, processing is the opposite of top-down processing (Kozminsky & Graetz, 1986). When readers and listeners employ bottom-up models of comprehension, they look at specific details, such as phrases, morphology and syntax, and move toward a general understanding of the text (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993). Theorists believe that readers and listeners use both bottom-up and top-down processing (Richards, 1990), and some argue that these processes take place simultaneously. "Details are attended to...while conceptual understanding of a more general nature allows the listener or reader to anticipate and predict" (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993, p. 136). Kozminsky and
Graetz's (1986) study found that second language learners with sufficient background knowledge employ top-down processing while students reading in their native language, with weak background knowledge, utilize bottom-up processing.
Listening Comprehension
Rubin (1990) states that "listening consists of processing information which the listener gets from visual and auditory clues in order to define what is going on and what the speaker is trying to express" (p. 309). Lundsteen (1979)

calls listening the "reception of any kind of sound" (p. 21). Researchers include the knowledge of specific linguistic structures, learning to use non-pedagogical contextual cues, understanding native accents, keeping up with native speaker speed and recognizing a wide range of lexical meanings in their definition of listening comprehension (Secules, Herron & Tomasello, 1992).
Listening also varies across different types of contexts. The circumstances in which oral language is used differentiate listening from other tasks associated with language (Byrnes, 1984). Byrnes (1984) recognizes the four modes of speech, classified by the situation listeners are in, as they are described by Belle (1980):
(l)spontaneous free speech, characterized by the interactiveness of the situation...(2) deliberate free speech as it occurs in interviews and discussions...(3) oral presentation of a written text as in newscasts, commentaries, and lectures where transmission of information is the objective...(4) oral presentation of a fixed, rehearsed script such as on stage or in a film. (p. 319)
Types of speech associated with interactional communication involve maintaining communication rather than delivering information and, therefore, the focus is on the phatic, rather than cognitive, plane. When listening for information is the purpose, listeners often receive information in "short bursts within a generally transactional framework" (p. 319), and recalling details is essential. Non-transactional speech usually lasts longer and contains fewer linguistic errors than interactional communicative situations. This type of
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listening does not require listeners to recall details but rather to acquire a global understanding of what they hear (Byrnes, 1984). In spite of the fact that listening has traditionally been the "neglected" skill of language instruction, undeniably it is the single language skill used most in human communication. We can expect to spend twice as much time listening as speaking, quadruple the time in listening over reading, and five times more listening than writing. (Morley, 1990, pp. 317-318)
According to Long (1986) language production is not possible without first acquiring competence in listening. One can see the obvious need to focus more attention on the area of listening, especially where language learning is concerned, based on the amount of time we spend listening versus using other language skills. O'Maggio-Hadley (1993), Long (1986) and Meunier-Cinko
(1995) assert that developing listening skills builds confidence with the target language.
Listening remains something of a mystery to researchers. Researchers do not agree on what happens during the listening comprehension process
(Long, 1986). Unlike the "active" skills of writing and speaking, listening is not easy to observe, which is part of the reason that there was little published material that focused on teaching listening before the 1980s (O'Maggio-Hadley,
1993). Foreign language instructors used to teach their classes based on the assumption that students would acquire listening proficiency on their own.
However, in the last two decades researchers have recognized the need to
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concentrate on listening and have emphasized it in the language classroom. In the 1990s, there has been growing interest in designing materials to teach [listening] comprehension more actively, especially through the use of culturally authentic texts, videotaped materials, and computer-assisted instruction that allows for greater interaction between the learner and the text,
(p. 165)
Video and Listening Comprehension
Interest has increased in the usefulness of audio-visual exercises in the language learning laboratory, especially regarding the development of listening comprehension. Teaching trends from the 1980s include a greater emphasis on contextual listening and the use of authentic oral texts used for listening tasks
(Morley, 1990). Garza (1990) defines authentic texts as "materials that are prepared by native speakers of a language for other native speakers, and expressly net for learners of that language" (pp. 288-289). He continues his definition with examples of authentic materials that include print, audio and video materials manufactured for "local consumption quality" (p. 289). O'Maggio-
Hadley (1993) continues to suggest the use of authentic materials for language instruction, though Ciccone (1995) mentions that some researchers find authentic materials too challenging for students at lower language proficiency levels.
According to Meunier-Cinko (1992), "video essentially addresses listening skills. But the visual input a video provides integrates the audio
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material in a context that helps students guess what they miss in an oral text"
(p. 150). Thus, Meunier-Cinko points out that even if students do not pick up specific details from a video they enhance their general comprehension skills.
They learn how a culture utilizes a tongue in order to create and communicate meaning (Ciccone, 1995). Additionally, video provides more authentic language situations than cassette tapes (Garrett, 1991).
With the recent attention video has received as a language learning tool
(Chung, 1994; Ciccone, 1995; Secules, Herron & Tomasello, 1992), research has begun which compares the development of listening comprehension skills through the use of video activities versus other traditional forms of exercises.
Secules, Herron, and Tomasello (1992) performed a semester-long experiment to compare videotaped instructional materials with native speakers in everyday situations to customary teaching methods such as classroom exercises and drills. They performed the study with university students in their second semester of French, and the analysis looked at listening comprehension. The study included four classes, two of which served as the experimental groups.
These groups viewed videos, called French In Action, on a weekly basis during one of their four weekly class days. The other two classes received instruction in the Direct Method (defined in Appendix G). Students who study a foreign language with a direct method spend large quantities of class time listening to the target language. The subjects who watched French In Action videos spent
13

large amounts of time listening to the target language, as well, though they were listening to and watching videos rather than a classroom instructor.
Participants in the experimental classes used the workbook, textbook and audio cassette tapes designed for use with the videos. The French In Action videos were designed to improve listening comprehension skills because they allow students more experience with native speech (at normal speeds) than traditional methods (Meunier-Cinko, 1992). Participants in the control group did not watch the French In Action videos, and they used a different textbook than the experimental groups.
In order to test the students' listening skills, at the end of the semester all four classes of students watched a video in French, then answered questions in
English about the video. Test questions employed English instead of French in order to test solely the pupils' skills in listening comprehension and avoid testing another factor, such as writing skills, in the target language (Meunier-Cinko,
1995).
The investigation revealed that students who used the French in Action video tapes had significantly higher test scores in the area of listening comprehension and with questions that involved main ideas, details and inferences than those who did not use the videos. In addition, the students who learned with the videos performed better on grammatical structures than those who used drills, and the video learning students reported that they enjoyed watching the videos (Secules, Herron & Tomasello, 1992, pp.486-487).
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Concerning this same study, Ciccone (1995) points out that video materials improve student motivation and add realism to the classroom by providing
"important nonverbal Information that increases cultural understanding" while augmenting skills in the area of listening comprehension (p.206). Currently the only research that exists In regard to the French In Action study praises the investigation and the use of audio-visual exercises.
Chung (1994) studied whether the use of audio-only dialogues, or dialogues combined with single picture images, multiple picture images or moving-video images assisted college students in building listening skills in intermediate and advanced French classes. In addition, he compared these students with other students who only saw the visual segments of the same dialogues. Each of the 75 paid participants in the advanced (students with more than four semesters of French), intermediate (students in their third and fourth semesters of French) and visual images-only groups (participants of either advanced or intermediate French who only watched the dialogues) took a listening comprehension test, either prior to or after being exposed to four dialogues. The dialogues were audio-visual recordings of native Frenchspeakers who discussed purchasing clothes, purchasing wine, moving furniture and the use of computers. Two sets of the four dialogues were made. One set of tapes had audio and video and the other had only visual images of the 3-4 minute two-person dialogues. Each set included four tapes, all with one of four different dialogue orders: ABCD, BCDA, CDAB, DABC. Some participants
15

watched and listened to the dialogues while others only watched the dialogues.
As the participants were presented with the dialogues they received increasing amounts of information: starting with audio-only dialogues (except for the visual images-only group), then visual Images that began with a still picture, multiple pictures (which were like a slide show) and finally videotaped pictures.
Afterwards, participants were tested for their ability to recall main ideas and details and for their global knowledge of the dialogues.
Chung's investigation found that "images alone are not sufficient for representing a dialogue, unless generating inferences is the desired outcome"
(1994, p. 107). However, audio, combined with visual images, whether "one or more supporting images" (p. 92), improved listening comprehension with the
"combination of moving images with corresponding audio being the most effective" (p. 92). Students who could only remember a few details when they experienced the audio-only condition could "recall main ideas supported with details when provided with images" (p. 101). Moving images aided students in listening because of the paralinguistic cues provided. Some images helped participants to make predictions about the scene's content. These images most likely served as "advance organizers," or tools that allow students to recall their already existing background knowledge about a particular subject in order to make educated guesses about a situation. Advance organizers aid students in learning and remembering new material (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993).
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Chung's study also concluded that higher-proficiency students are more skilled than lower-proficiency students in using the information available to them to interpret messages. Both levels of foreign language students shared an equal level of recall of visual images (Chung, 1994).
The Other Receptive Skill: Reading
With the exception of the era when ALM monopolized language teaching strategies, reading has played a weighty role in foreign language classroom curricula (Barnett, 1989). Savignon (1983) asserted that, until the 1980s, reading was almost the only goal of foreign language teaching. Barnett (1989) considers reading a primary means for academic language learning and points out three major reasons for reading instruction in the foreign language classroom: (1) reading is necessary for teaching literature; (2) competency in reading can be maintained after formal study in the target language is completed; (3) reading cultivates the maturation and improvement of literacy skills.
Reading has taken on a new image. Although in the past researchers considered capacities in the areas of listening and reading "passive" (Barnett,
1989), since the 1980s, researchers have called reading an active exercise. In addition, reading is a skill that belongs in the communicative classroom,
"especially when authentic materials can serve the dual purpose of developing reading skills and fostering cultural insights and understanding" (O'Maggio-
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Hadley, 1993, p. 163). Danks and Pezdek (1979) define learning to read as the transfer of auditory signals of language, which one has already learned, to new visual signs for the same signals. Barnett (1989) calls reading "communication,
...a mental process, the reader's active participation in the creation of meaning, a manipulation of strategies...essential to appreciating target language literature"
(p. 2).
First Language Reading Versus Second Language Reading
Existing theories for teaching reading comprehension vary. Some researchers encourage reader schema and background theory. Schema theory states that learners comprehend current experiences based on both previous experiences and world knowledge (Barnett, 1989; Long, 1989). Goodman
(1972) interprets reading as a psycholinguistic process, one that relates to the study of the connection between language and the behavioral qualities of language users. Barnett (1989) emphasizes the issue of differences in first and foreign language reading, asserting that second language readers are handicapped in comparison to first language readers. Reading in the target language strains short-term memory more than reading in the first language due to the presentation of a foreign linguistic code (Barnett, 1989). In addition, second language readers face cultural barriers in authentic reading texts because the texts are woven with the culture in which they were written. In order to comprehend texts, some readers in the target language implement
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comprehension strategies that they engage in their first language reading
(Barnett, 1989). These strategies differ from learner to learner based on various factors which range from reader purpose and enthusiasm to proficiency in the target language and schemata (Barnett, 1989).
Researchers point to the learners' proficiency in the target language as a determining factor for whether learners transfer their first language reading strategies, or "problem-solving techniques readers employ to get meaning from a text" (Barnett, 1989, p. 36), when faced with a passage in the target language.
Beginning second language learners' target language reading strategies deviate from their reading abilities in the first language. Experiments with lower-level readers in a second language demonstrate that they tend to focus on the individual words of a text and comprehend less than one-third of the passage. In addition, these readers tend to use bottom-up strategies for comprehension.
Novice and intermediate learners attempt, sometimes successfully, to employ first language reading strategies when reading in their second language, though this practice is more common among advanced readers (Barnett, 1989).
Advanced foreign language readers also use top-down processing strategies
(Oiler, 1973; Kozminsky & Graetz, 1986) and are better equipped to apply schemata to a reading passage (Kozminsky & Graetz, 1986).
No conclusive evidence exists either for or against the idea that first language reading strategies transfer to second language reading.
Comprehending written messages "depends in great measure on what readers
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already know about a topic and on what they expect in terms of text structure.
General language proficiency affects how much readers understand" (Barnett,
1989, p. 63).
Use of Video for Acguisition of Listening and Reading Skills in the Target Language
Lund (1991) sees a parallel between the processes of reading and listening which supports the use of video for building skills in these language components. "By providing analogous cues, video encourages the development of useful reading techniques" (p. 209). Video images serve as the equivalent of written cognates with images that often translate notions of chronology, comparison, or contrast not unlike adverbial and conjunctive expressions; and change in voice or actor can provide the aural or visual equivalent of proper names, pronouns, quotation marks and other identifying graphic features, (p. 209)
Ciccone (1995) concluded in his article "Teaching with Authentic Video: Theory and Practice" that video raises the comprehensibility of reading material on similar concepts. He states that the mixture of authentic video materials with authentic reading materials will improve both listening and reading comprehension because "working with authentic video materials as meaningful, interesting language to be decoded encourages the fundamental processes needed to improve reading comprehension and increase reader satisfaction" (p.
209).
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Kasper and Morris (1988) examined differences in perceived difficulty among types of presentation media (in the native language) that included electronic mall, audio-only and audio-visual media. Their investigation included
24 volunteers, both business administration faculty and graduate students, who participated in the blocked design experiment, indicating that all subjects received the four treatments. Subjects were presented with four types of media: paper, electronic mail, audiotape and videotape, one at a time. After receiving a message in each medium, which they could refer to only one time, subjects took a quiz on paper to measure their comprehension of the message. Kasper and
Morris concluded that no there is no difference in message comprehension between audio-only and audio-visual media, nor between electronic mail and paper media presentation in the first language. These results raise the question of whether there would be no difference in comprehension of audio-only versus audio-visual media presentation in the second language as well.
The use of video has been encouraged as a supplement to traditional classroom teaching, rather than as a replacement, since the experimental television lessons of the 1960s proved unappealing to teachers and students
(Hocking, 1964). Video has, however, been suggested as a replacement for audio cassette tape language learning laboratory exercises because of its ability to aid students in individual learning in a more appealing, modern, possibly more effective way than audio cassettes.
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Historv of the Language Lab
The year 1904 marks the beginning of the language learning laboratory in
England, though the term "language lab" was not coined until the 1940s. The language learning laboratory has been defined as "a special room with electronic equipment set aside for language practice by students. The tape recorder alone...does not constitute a laboratory" (Huebner, 1967, p. 109). In the lab, students have the opportunity to practice the target language at their own pace, as frequently as they choose. During the 1940s, the first language labs were built for colleges (Hocking, 1964). The National Defense Education Act
(NDEA) of 1958 provided grants to U.S. schools that allowed for the installation of language labs on school campuses (Green, 1975; Huebner, 1967). Schools opened up language labs in an effort to economize on the teacher's time (Green,
1975), supplement class practice time, create "simultaneous yet individualized student practice" (Hocking, 1964, p. 35) and to "provide a convenient means of hearing and responding to audio lingual drills" (Stack, 1971, p. 3).
Although many colleges, universities, and even some high schools boast that they have elaborately equipped language learning laboratories, preliminary studies of the lab found discouraging results about its usefulness. The Keating report of 1963 found it "of doubtful value...one week in the lab produces poorer results than no lab at all" (Green, 1975, p. 14). Difficulties existed in measuring the usefulness of the language lab. There was a problem with "isolating the variable that it was proposed to measure and of holding constant all the other
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variables affecting learning in a normal classroom teaching situation" (Green,
1975, p. 34). Keeping the "control" and the "experimental" groups of students intact for enough time to make significant comparisons of their progress was an additional problem (Green, 1975).
Originally schools used the language learning laboratory to provide auditory activities for their students. As stated previously, colleges began to open language labs in the 1940s (Hocking, 1964) just a decade before the audio-lingual method (ALM) would become the most common form of foreign language learning outside of the classroom (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993). The
United States armed forces used ALM almost exclusively to train its soldiers in language to send them overseas and to fight in World War II. Funding from the
NDEA in the 50s and 60s also provided for the training of foreign language teachers with ALM. These ALM exercises, also called Aural-Oral, usually consisted of dialogue memorization and listening drills, and they de-emphasized teaching grammar in the classroom (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993).
As late as the 1970s the tape and recorder were the staple items of the labs, which provided a "drill ground guided by authentic native voices...giving intense active practice in application of structural and phonetic principles previously presented in the classroom" (Stack, 1971, p. 118). Also, learners had the opportunity to practice the different aspects of the target language individually at their own pace, and as frequently as they chose (Huebner, 1967).
With the cassette tape and recorder, language pupils participated in a variety of
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listening and "audio-active" response activities. These exercises consisted of student oral response (usually in a microphone or cassette recorder) to a dialogue or question heard on the cassette tape. Other activities included
"audio-active-compare," or "listen-record-respond," exercises in which the learner listened to a broadcast, responded to it, and listened to a recording of his or her response in order to compare it with the broadcast and chart his or her progress in the language (Stack, 1971). ALM activities fit the idea that "the steps in language teaching are (1) hearing (2) speaking (3) reading (4) writing"
(p. 117), in that order, with hearing and speaking classified as "audiolingual skills" and reading and writing referred to as "graphic skills" (p. 117).
Video in the Language Learning Laboratorv
As modern technology has continued to change so have language laboratory materials. Filmstrips, projectors and videocassettes brought audiovisual learning experiences with them, which have proven both entertaining and educational for students. However, before discussing the benefits of audiovisual language learning tools, I will review the research from the past that favored audio-only exercises for language teaching. This research from before the establishment of the video era will explain why audio-visual learning was not embraced with the same enthusiasm with which videos were welcomed outside of the language learning laboratory.
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Results of investigations conducted before the 1980s were unfavorable regarding the use of audio-visual language lab activities. Analyses from the
1960s and 1970s described the use of video as helpful only for teaching culture and promoted audio-aural activities as the stronger means for developing skills in the target language. "By and large, the audial [sic] aids seem to be reserved for the linguistic aspect and the visual aids for the cultural" (Huebner, 1967, p.
63). Audio-visual aids were seen as unsuitable for the "bulk of linguistic training" with their strength lying in "their ability to give the student a simulated experience in the foreign country" (Huebner, 1967, p. 63), mainly to teach culture (Hocking, 1964). Cassette tapes were also considered better than videos at guiding students' reading while allowing them to hear correct pronunciation and phonetic principles (Stack, 1971) and preventing them from getting off task, all which aid in comprehension (Huebner, 1967). The tape recorder was advocated for supporting "oral memory" and presenting students with accurate sentence rhythm and intonation (Huebner, 1967). However,
Huebner (1967) admits that listening to the tapes can become tedious.
Filmstrips were suitable for creating interest in the country where the target language was spoken but not for teaching the formal aspects of the target language, such as grammar. In addition, foreign language teachers in the 1960s said they were intimidated by "new technology," such as filmstrips and projectors. They added that they did not find audio-visual aids useful or cost effective (Huebner, 1967).
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More problems occurred with the language lab when television instruction was introduced. In addition to feeling intimidated by "new technology," foreign language instructors hesitated about using television in the classroom because of the television programs themselves. Language lesson productions for television usually were thrown together quickly, lacking planning and organization. Viewers of these programs, which gave a "cheap and false impression" (Stack, 1971, p. 53) of foreign language learning, eventually lost interest in them. In addition, a research project utilizing television to teach
French found that "t.v. lessons alone, without class follow-up, are ineffective.
For satisfactory achievement, at least thirty minutes of follow-up time a week are needed at the first two levels and at least 45 minutes at the third level" (Hocking,
1964, p. 71). In the early 1960s educators feared that classroom instructors would be replaced by "canned" television lessons, lessons conducted by teachers via television rather than live classroom sessions. Later, however, it was concluded that the impersonality of these "canned" lessons that did not appeal to teachers did not appeal to students either (Hocking, 1964). In spite of its troublesome introduction into foreign language instruction, the use of video as a teaching tool in the classroom and the language learning laboratory has endured.
Many researchers and teachers now praise the use of videos and television for language instruction and include audio-visual materials in their foreign language curricula. According to Secules, Herron and Tomasello (1992),
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"video permits learners to witness the dynamics of interaction as they observe native speakers in authentic settings speaking and using different accents, registers and paralinguistic cues (e.g., posture, gestures)" (p. 480). Video teaches the social dimension of language including the previously mentioned register or level of formality: formal talk versus slang (Rice, 1983). According to
Meunier-Cinko (1992) television and videos are effective in motivating students, adding realism and providing students with "important non-verbal information
(such as greeting patterns, distance between interlocutors and the like)...With video, language takes on another dimension" (pp. 149-150) and encourages global understanding strategies (Ciccone, 1995). Although the same language may be spoken in a variety of countries, the same word may have a different meaning in different countries. For instance, a coche in Mexico is a car while in
Costa Rica a coche is a baby stroller. The use of video helps students with semantics by demonstrating "that the meaning of specific words or utterances varies according to the speaker's identity and situation, hence the importance of recognizing systems of discourse employed by a particular passage" (Altman,
1989, p. 4). Videos allow learners to begin to picture "real-life target-culture examples" of items they have studied allowing them to develop an "authentic visual dictionary" (p. 16).
Video also offers constant contextual updating, which provides maximum comprehension of the language and offers the potential to teach linguistic and contextualizing skills needed for understanding future passages in the target
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language, whether or not they are presented in the video (Altman, 1989).
According to Ciccone (1995):
Authentic video makes linguistic input more comprehensible by embedding It in a context of extralinguistic cultural cues that assure the transmission of meaning when the complete grammatical and lexical decoding is not likely to be achieved...(students) have greater difficulty in understanding audio-only conversations than video materials despite similarities in topic and preparatory materials, (pp. 205-206)
In addition, Garza (1990) adds that video material "is more easily contextualized, and, thus, more accessible to the learner" (p. 292). He also states that video allows instructors to provide more authentic language situations than without it.
Thus, the richer context provided by audio-visual messages over audio-only ones makes audio-visual messages easier to decipher.
With advances and improvements in both equipment and learning materials, the language learning laboratory has come to be seen as a useful tool in language learning. Hocking's (1964) prediction that "while the language laboratory is not the only point of contact between technological development and language teaching, it has been and will remain the most important one for some time to come" (p. 61) appears to be true, even three decades later.
Guiding Principles
Researchers like Ciccone (1995) contend that audio-visual messages are easier to decode than audio-only messages by reason of the extralinguistic cultural cues that the former provide, as explained earlier. Research in the field
28

of psychology alludes to the same Idea. Braine (1988) says that in the last 25 years, first language acquisition has received great interest from psychology researchers. From first language acquisition research done by psychologists with children, one may infer that audio-visual activities will more effectively aid second language students in building language skills in the areas of reading and listening comprehension. Both Pinker (1987) and Braine (1988) state, through their individual first language acquisition models, that children use meaningful context to extract grammatical categories and information. This meaningful information is used to code utterances and language.
In his article "The Bootstrapping Problem in Language Acquisition,"
Pinker (1987) explains that when acquiring the first language, children use the context of the situation they are in when they hear language spoken to help them to make sense of the utterance they have heard. Thus, the situational context serves as a bootstrap to the utterance or language that is heard in order to comprehend it. Children employ meaningful context to make sense of grammatical rules. I postulated that adults learning their second language would also bootstrap situational context to audio-visual messages in the second language in order to understand the meanings of these messages. The
Bootstrapping Hypothesis also rejects the use of error correction as a means for first language learning. MacWhinney (1987) praises Pinker's model for the
"evidence indicating that children do not learn by correction or 'negative instances'" (p.xii), which is in agreement with the Natural Approach.
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Braine (1988) discusses the "sieve memory" for first language acquisition in his article "Modeling the Acquisition of Linguistic Structure." According to
Braine's conceptual, linguistic long-term model, children add to previously learned information as it Is acquired in an effort to learn language. Children learn general patterns of language first, and gradually their language becomes more sophisticated. They begin to use specific language patterns that are exceptions to the general patterns, and they learn when these specific patterns take precedence over the general ones. For instance, children will learn that the past tense in English is generally formed by adding the suffix -ed to a present tense verb, and they will add -ed to every verb when they want to speak in the past tense. Eventually, children will learn that in some cases, such as with the verbs "go," "throw," and "swim," adding the -ed suffix is incorrect. They will begin to learn the specific patterns of irregular verbs and replace "goed,"
"throwed," and "swimmed" with "went," "threw," and "swam," respectively.
Braine (1988) uses the term "sieve" in his "sieve memory" model because he postulates that although children will hear errors in language, the recurrence of these errors is rare. Therefore, the errors will be erased from the child's memory, allowing for the acquisition of the correct language they hear. Like
Pinker, Braine believes that error correction is unnecessary.
If second language learners follow the same pattern when they are learning their second language that they did when they learned their first language, one may hypothesize that audio-visual learning activities provide a
30

richer context for encoding oral and written information in the target language than audio-only learning exercises. Applying both Braine's (1988) and Pinker's
(1987) models to adults' listening and reading comprehension suggests that audio-visual language laboratory exercises will be more effective than audioonly techniques because audio-visual activities provide a richer and more abundant context for students to use in decoding oral and written messages.
Statement of Hvpotheses
As stated previously, my interest lies in the gap in empirical research concerning language learning laboratory exercises and teaching materials developed to improve listening and reading comprehension skills in the foreign language. Influenced by my previous experience of teaching a second language through the use of both audio-only and audio-visual language lab exercises, I conducted a one-semester study of the progress of first-year Spanish students' receptive second language skills with the use of audio-only and audio-visual language lab materials. My hypotheses are:
Hoi: There is no difference in listening comprehension performance in the second language of students who receive systematic audio-visual instruction or audio-only instruction in the language learning laboratory.
Ho2: There is no difference in reading comprehension performance in the second language of students who receive systematic audio-visual instruction or audio-only instruction in the language learning laboratory.
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Ho3: There is no difference in the combined listening/reading performance in the second language of students who receive systematic audio-visual instruction or audio-only instruction in the language learning laboratory.
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CHAPTER
METHOD
Spanish 1501 was chosen for the experiment in order to work with students with the least possible amount of experience in the language. Spanish
1501 students have no more than one year of high school language study; students with two years or more high school instruction must take the dual first and second semester class, Spanish 1507. The 1501 pupils all received instruction in the current method of Spanish instruction at Texas Tech University,
Terrell's Natural Method. This communicative mode of instruction, which evolved from the Direct Method, emphasizes total immersion into the target language with little or no use of the students' native language in the classroom
(Terrell etal., 1994).
Total Physical Response, or TPR, is a component of the Natural Method, formulated by Asher. The Natural Method "is based on the belief that listening comprehension should be developed fully, as it is with children learning their native language, before any active oral participation from students is expected"
(O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993, p. 105). Also, "skills can be more rapidly assimilated if the teacher appeals to the students' kinesthetic-sensory system" (p. 105).
Therefore, Total Physical Response, or TPR, is an integral part of the Natural
Method. In TPR body movements are considered part of the learning process.
Often the teachers present the target language to students in the form of
33

commands. Students respond to the commands in order to demonstrate their comprehension.
The Natural Method emphasizes communicative competence in the target language and encourages only minimal grammar training in class. However, students must have some knowledge of syntax, such as gender, tense, number marking and subject-verb agreement, in order to fully comprehend the oral and written messages they receive In Spanish. For instance, subject pronouns are often omitted in spoken and written Spanish, especially when speaking or writing in both the singular and plural forms of the first person, because the subject Is evident from the verb ending. Students need to understand this concept in order to know who the subject is in a particular passage. Therefore, textbooks for the
Spanish 1501 course include detailed, structured grammar explanations and exercises that students complete outside of class. Principles of the Natural
Method suggest that instructors collect students' grammar assignments and give them "systematic feedback" on the homework though the responsibility of improving syntactical skills lies on the student. The Natural Method assumes that students need a knowledge, though only a minimal one, of grammar in the target language to be able to communicate and that these students will be motivated to complete grammar assignments outside of class (O'Maggio-Hadley,
1993).
Instructors devote class time to developing communication skills in the target language. Teachers promote speech production in the second language,
34

but they do not require students to speak until they are ready, in accordance with the theory behind the Affective Filter Hypothesis (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993) which also informs the Natural Method. The Affective Filter Hypothesis states that attitudes and feelings do not impact language learning directly but can prevent students from acquiring language from input. If a student is anxious or does not perceive the target culture in a positive light, he or she may understand the input but a psychological block (the Affective
Filter) will prevent acquisition. (Terrell et al., 1994, p. xvii)
Teachers, therefore, are encouraged to foster a "non-threatening and friendly atmosphere in the classroom" (Baltra, 1992, p. 45). Terrell's Dos Mundos
(1994), designed for instruction in the Natural Method, served as the text for all first year Spanish classes at Texas Tech.
The study conducted at Texas Tech is similar to, and possibly an improved version of, the Secules, Herron and Tomasello (1992) experiment. All participants in the Texas Tech study used the same textbooks and were compared against themselves. The French In Action study, on the other hand, had two sets of subjects (experimental and control subjects), and each set of subjects used different textbooks, creating more uncontrolled variables for
Secules, Herron and Tomasello. Some of the uncontrolled variables include age, motivation, attitude, level of frustration and amount of previous experience in foreign language study. The aforementioned uncontrolled variables were not present in the study conducted for the Destines experiment because the
35

participants in the study served as their own controls and were not compared against other students.
Participants
Fifty-six Texas Tech University students (31 male and 25 female) in their first semester of Spanish served as participants for this study. These participants came from the seven sections of the Spanish 1501 classes taught during the fall 1997 semester at Texas Tech. Participants ranged in age from 18 to over 36 years and were divided naturally into either a morning or an afternoon group as demonstrated in Table 1, depending on when their discussion section met. The morning group was composed of 15 males and 18 females; seven were sophomores, 13 juniors and 13 seniors. Twenty-three students were in the afternoon group, which included two sophomores, 12 juniors and nine seniors.
Caucasian students composed 83.9% of the sample, and Hispanic students made up 10.7%. Of the participants, 3.6% were African-American and
1.8% were Asian. I looked at the participants' ethnic backgrounds in order to learn whether a significant number of students came from Spanish-speaking backgrounds. Participants who grew up speaking Spanish or hearing it spoken in the home would have had an advantage over the other students in the study.
These participants from Spanish-speaking backgrounds would have had a familiarity with listening to, and possibly reading, Spanish that the other participants most likely would not have had. Therefore, the Hispanic students
36

could possibly have had higher listening and reading scores than the other students based not on the treatments they received in the study, but from skills the participants developed in their homes. However, the percentage of Hispanic students was not large enough to skew the results.
The majority of the students in this study, 44.6%, were juniors; 37.5% were seniors, 16.1% were in their sophomore year, and one student who was auditing the course did not have a classification. Few freshmen have the opportunity to take first-year Spanish because the class sizes are limited, and upperclassmen are given preference where course availability is concerned.
Of the 56 participants, over half (57.1%, or 32 students) had studied one or more of six different foreign languages prior to taking Spanish 1501. Latin was the most common previously studied language. Spanish was second to
Latin as 10 and nine students, respectively, noted experience in these languages. Of the rest of the participants with previous foreign language experience, eight had studied French, two had studied German and one student spoke Chinese. Some students had received instruction in two languages other than English. Of the students, one had been introduced to German and
Spanish, one to French and Spanish, and two had some familiarity with French and Russian.
Almost half, 44.6% of all participants, experienced previous foreign language instruction in high school. One student had second language
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instruction in junior high school, four in college, and two indicated that they were introduced to a foreign language in a medium other than school.
Only seven participants, 12.5%, had used a language learning laboratory before participating in this experiment Four of these students' lab activities consisted of listening to cassette tapes and completing workbook exercises. Of the other three with lab experience, one had used video and audiotapes with workbook exercises, one had used cassette tapes only, and one indicated executing "other" types of language laboratory activities. For the other 87.5% of the participants, 49 students, their participation in the experiment constituted their first exposure to the language learning laboratory. Therefore, these participants probably had few, if any, preconceived positive or negative ideas about the language lab based on personal experience. This lack of experience in the lab on the part of almost 90% of the participants allowed students to give unbiased opinions about it on the Pre-Test questionnaire.
Student Eligibilitv Reguirements and Selection for the Experiment
Students participated in the experiment as a part of their normal class activities. All pupils in Spanish 1501 had the same language learning laboratory requirements. During the first week of classes, I met with all sections of the first semester Spanish classes. I explained to them that their Spanish class would participate in an experiment being conducted to gather data for a dissertation.
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Table 1
Demographic Information about Participants
Group
Morning Afternoon
Number of Males 15 16
Number of Females 18 7
* Classification:
Sophomores
Juniors
Seniors
7
13
13
2
12
9
Note. Data are for the 56 students who completed the experiment.
" One student was auditing the course and did not have a classification.
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Table 2
Previous Foreign Language Experience
Students with no previous foreign language experience
Students with previous foreign language experience
Previous languages studied
% of students
42.9
57.1
Latin
Spanish
French
German
Chinese
German and Spanish
French and Spanish
French and Russian
17.9
16.1
14.3
3.6
1.8
1.8
1.8
3.6
Note. Data are for the 56 students who completed the experiment requirements.
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This explanation included a brief description of what their lab requirements and activities would be.
In order for their data to be eligible for the experiment, students had to fill out the pre-test survey and demographic questionnaire. In addition, they had to be present for the mid-term and the final exam and complete the post-test and demographic survey. Data were collected from all members of Spanish 1501 courses. However, data from those who did not meet the eligibility requirements were discarded without their knowing about it.
Materials
Pre- and post-test surveys, questionnaires, a mid-term examination, a final examination, and videos and workbooks from the Destines learning series constituted the materials used for the experiment. Destines (VanPatten, Marks,
& Teschner, 1992) is a video telenevela, a soap opera, series developed for use in the Spanish classroom, lab or in lieu of the classroom. The Destines videos present a combination of narration and dialogue. Each half-hour episode has a continuing story line, narrated in English, which pauses at various intervals to highlight grammatical concepts and vocabulary (in English). OthenA/ise the story and dialogue are presented completely in Spanish. The combination of English narration and the characters' dialogues are descriptive enough that listeners are able to understand the story line without visual aids. The McGraw-Hill
Publishers donated workbooks, called Viewer's Guides, that accompany the
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Destines video series; they granted enough books for all pupils to have their own book. The Viewer's Guides have two sets of activities that accompany each episode in the series. The first set of exercises, called Preparacidn, asks participants to make predictions about what they imagine will happen in the upcoming episode, usually In the form of multiple choice questions. Such questions serve as "advance organizers" (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1983). Thus, these questions trigger the students' previous experiences watching episodes of the soap opera and completing the Preparacidn exercises. The triggering of students' previous experiences with the videos allows the new information and lessons in the current day's episode to affix themselves to the students' cognitive structures, or codes of already existing knowledge. Use of advance organizers assists students in learning and retaining new lessons (O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993).
The iJienes buena memoria? {Do You Have a Good Memory?) activities, the second type of exercises that accompanies each installment of the videos, include questions about what happened in the episode just viewed; these questions are usually multiple choice, matching or sequencing.
The pre- and post-test questionnaires asked each participant for demographic information, such as age category of learner and previous experience in studying a second language. Some students indicated on the pretest that they had had less previous language experience prior to taking Spanish
1501 than they indicated on the post-test. Soliciting the same information on both the pre- and post-test demographic questionnaire was done in order to
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control for the students who were untruthful about their previous language experience. Of the three students who gave different information on the preand post- demographic surveys, all three of them said on the pre-test that they had less than one year of high school instruction in Spanish in order to be able to qualify to take Spanish 1501. On the post-tests, the students admitted to having one year of high school Spanish instruction. Students who have more than one year of high school instruction in Spanish are required to take the dual, first and second semesters combined, course if they want to receive credit for taking an introductory Spanish course.
The pre-test survey (included in the Appendix with the demographic information questionnaire) focuses on student opinions and preconceived notions about the language learning laboratory. It is composed of 11 statements about the language lab, each with a five-point Likert Scale. A number value of
1-5 was assigned for the possible ratings listed for each statement. The rating scale follows: 1= Strongly Disagree; 2=Disagree; 3=Neither agree nor disagree;
4=Agree; 5=Strongly Agree. Participants rated statements about how useful they thought the language learning laboratory would be for their acquisition of
Spanish. The post-test survey closely resembled the pre-test survey except that it asked students to rate statements about how useful they found the language learning laboratory after their one-semester experience.
The three-page, 30-question mid-term was composed using materials from the Destines tape script and audio script materials as well as questions that
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I wrote. The combination listening/reading comprehension part of the exam came from the lab workbook exercises published in the Destines Study Guide, which the students did not have access to. This section made up one third of the test. The two passages used for the reading section of the mid-term came directly from the students' workbooks; I wrote the questions about the passages to ensure that the students had no previous access to them. Listening passages about familiar characters were chosen based on the premise that at the lowest proficiency levels, listening materials that present very familiar and/or predictable material content ...will be best, given that students will use their linguistic knowledge of the world to aid them in comprehension when their linguistic skills are deficient. (O'Maggio-
Hadley, 1993, p. 170)
Each reading exercise focused on a character that the students had some familiarity with from the Destines series In order to create a top-down processing reading exercise, as described in Chapter II. Goodman (1972) recommends the use of top-down processing exercises to help readers make predictions about the text they are working with and to help them "confirm or reject their hypotheses as they process the information in the text" (p. 133). The information about these characters had not been presented in the story line of the episodes, and students had not been required to read the passages prior to the test.
The final exam closely resembled the mid-term in its format. The exam was made up of 30 questions: 10 listening comprehension, 10 reading comprehension and 10 listening/reading comprehension. The 10 listening comprehension questions were a combination of questions that the Destines
44

series included in the Study Guide and questions that I wrote. The two passages that made up the reading comprehension texts came from the
Destines Study Guide. These reading exercises, like the ones from the midterm, focused on a character from the Destines series. Unlike the mid-term, however, students did not have prior access to the texts that appeared on the final. I wrote the multiple-choice questions that accompanied each passage.
In order to complete the mid-term and the final exam, participants needed a general knowledge of syntax. They had to understand subject-verb agreement, adjective agreement and telling time. In addition, they needed to recognize cognates from English. For the listening/reading portion of the midterm students should have understood present tense reflexive verbs, and, for the reading section of the final exam, the difference between present and past tense verbs.
Because students viewed or listened to the Destines stories in the language lab, and were, therefore, familiar with the language lab setting, I used the lab's video and audio equipment to give the mid-term and final exams.
Students sat In glass study carrels to watch or listen to Destines. Although the lab broadcasts the audio part of Destines with the use of a sound system, participants had the option of using the lab's headphones to listen to the
telenevela. The headphones reduced peripheral distractions. In addition, the headphones aided the one hearing-impaired student in the afternoon group.
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Teaching Procedure
Students attended class five days per week. They met with their instructor, a teaching assistant, three days of the week. Of the other two days, one was the lab day, described above. On the other day, Susan Stein,
Associate Professor of Spanish and the First-Year Spanish Supervisor, lectured to the combined sections of 1501 about grammatical concepts. I assumed that the Spanish 1501 students would gain enough syntactical knowledge in their weekly meetings with Stein to be able to get a global understanding of the
Destines episodes.
I divided the students into two groups. The three sections of Spanish
1501 that met at 8 a.m. composed the morning group. The afternoon group included the remaining four sections of 1501. One day per week, Thursday for the morning classes and Friday for the afternoon classes, was designated a lab day. On lab days students met with me in the language learning laboratory for fifty minutes. Attendance at the weekly lab sessions accounted for 10 percent of the students' overall semester grade in Spanish 1501; missed labs were not allowed to be made up. Records of attendance were kept for every weekly meeting. Three sections of the 1501 pupils, approximately 75 participants, met on Thursday mornings at 8:00 a.m.; the other four sections of first-semester
Spanish, made up of about 40 students, fulfilled lab requirements Friday afternoons at 1:00 p.m. Of the roughly 112 students who took Spanish 1501 during the fall semester of 1997, data from only 56 of the participants could be
46

analyzed due to students missing exams, adding the course late or dropping the course before the end of the term.
During our first meeting, all students present voluntarily filled out a survey, called a pre-test, and a questionnaire. Because of the great fluctuation in attendance and class sizes that generally accompanies the first few weeks of classes, students who did not attend class the day that the pre-test survey and questionnaire were filled out had the opportunity to come to my office before our second weekly lab session to complete the forms. Ten students took advantage of this opportunity.
During the first half of the term, the morning group received audio-only instruction while the afternoon group received audio-visual instruction. After the mid-term the morning group received the audio-visual instruction and the afternoon group switched to audio-only instruction. Thus, the morning and the afternoon groups were exposed to both types of instruction. The type of speech participants listened to for both of the types of treatment they received in the lab is called "oral presentation of a fixed, rehearsed script," as defined in Chapter II,
(Byrnes, 1984, p. 319). In addition, this type of speech was non-transactional because the participants listening to and/or watching the videos did not interact with the characters in the videos.
During my weekly meetings with the students, they completed activities that corresponded to the Destines learning series. The first five to ten minutes of each lab session for both the morning and afternoon groups was spent filling
47

out questions in the Preparacidn section provided for each successive episode.
The Preparacidn questions asked students to make predictions about what they thought would happen in the upcoming episode. After each thirty-minute episode of the Destines videos, students spent five to ten minutes answering questions in the ^ Tienes buena memoria? part of the workbook provided for each episode. At the end of the lab period, we discussed the answers to the questions on the ^Tienes buena memoria? pages to review each episode.
Both the morning and afternoon groups were exposed to the same episode of Destines and executed the same workbook exercises on a weekly basis, with one significant difference. For the first half of the semester, the morning students, made up of three sections of Spanish 1501, listened to the
Destines story line only while the afternoon groups, made up of the remaining four sections of 1501, watched and listened to the videos. Students were exposed to the first six episodes of Destines during the first half of the semester.
After six weeks of the morning group's audio-only experience with the soap opera and the afternoon group's audio-visual activity with it, all of the students took the mid-term exam (included in the Appendix).
During the second half of the semester, the morning group had audiovisual access to the telenevela while the afternoon group had audio-only access to Destines. As they had done the previous half of the semester, both groups continued filling out the Preparacidn and ^ Tienes buena memoria? pages of the workbook before and after, respectively, each Destines episode. During the five
48

to ten minutes before and after playing the tapes of the soap opera, I walked up and down the aisles of study carrels to ensure that the members of the classes were completing the tasks in their workbooks. After four weeks of this procedure, the students took the final exam to measure their progress in listening and reading comprehension in Spanish. Participants had four weeks of the second type of treatment, as opposed to the six that they had of the first treatment type for two reasons: (1) the first Destines episode was an introduction to the series with background information which was not a "real" episode; (2) the first few weeks of the semester were confusing for some participants. Students did not have a definite setting for lab sessions until the third week of the semester. Students dropped and added 1501. I did not always have workbooks for new students on their first day of lab and had to wait for more to arrive from the publisher during the first three weeks of the term. The new students also did not understand the lab procedure. The first few lab sessions were less productive than the rest because students were not settled in the lab routine.
The second part of the lab meetings went more smoothly. Participants knew how to fulfill lab requirements, and where to meet, and no new students were included after the period of adding courses ended.
In addition to taking the final exam, participants filled out the post-test survey to ascertain student opinions about the language learning laboratory and which method of learning, audio-only or audio-visual, assisted them most effectively in building listening and reading comprehension skills. The post-test
49

survey included the same statements and Likert scale that the Pre-Test survey had, except that the statements on the Post-Test were in the past tense.
Testing Procedure
Both the morning and afternoon group took the same mid-term and final exams, which measured their competency in listening and reading and the combination of listening and reading in the second language. Students were not allowed to leave the language learning laboratory with any parts of the exams to prevent the morning group from showing the exams to the afternoon group.
The 10-question listening comprehension third of both the mid-term and the final exam required listeners to answer true or false to oral questions about two scripts that they listened to. Questions were oral only to ensure that no skill other than listening was tested.
For the listening/reading portion of the mid-term examination, students listened to two scripts (one provided by Destines on a cassette, the other a recording of a native speaker from Texas Tech and Spanish major from Texas
Tech University reading a script provided by Destines) two times each. Two different native Spanish speakers read aloud on tape for the listening and listening/reading combined sections of the mid-term; two different readers were used because neither individual had enough time to record the two passages used for the mid-term. One of these native speakers was able to read and record the scripts for the listening and listening/reading section of the final exam
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at the end of the semester. For the first activity, pupils worked a matching section based on the script that they heard. For the second script, learners filled in missing blanks on a mock student schedule based on the monologue they heard. These first two sections tested both listening and reading because students had to be able to read and understand the matching and fill-in the blank sections based on the script they listened to.
The listening/reading section of the final mirrored the listening/reading section on the mid-term. This section was composed of 10 questions, five questions for each of two passages that students listened to. Both passages described the daily routine of a character from the Destines series. For the first listening/reading activity, students had a list of possible activities that the character described on tape included in her daily routine, which were written on the exam. After listening to the passage twice, played on a tape provided by the
Destines series, participants were asked to indicate which of the activities listed on the exam were part of the character's daily routine. The second part of the listening/reading section included another list of the same character's daily activities. After hearing the passage twice, participants indicated whether the statements about the character's daily routine were true or false. Students' listening and reading skills were tested as they had to be able to comprehend written questions about passages that they were only able to listen to.
Reading comprehension composed the final 10 questions of the mid-term and the final exams. For this segment of both tests, students were asked to read
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two passages silently and answer multiple choice questions about each one.
Each passage was written about a specific character from the Destines series and included information that was not presented in any of the episodes of the telenevela.
For all three sections of the mid-term and final exams, I incorporated as much testing material from the Destines Faculty and Study Guides as possible to control for the amount of new vocabulary students saw on the exams. The
Faculty and Study Guide materials used vocabulary that students were exposed to during the Destines episodes that they, therefore, should have been familiar with. The rate of speed of speech of the voices on the cassettes was slightly slower than a normal rate of speed for the listening sections of the exams.
There was no limit on the number of times they could review the reading comprehension passages. They were allowed fifty minutes for the tests. All test questions were literal and sought to ascertain whether participants had a general knowledge of the topics that they listened to or read about; questions were not grammar-based.
The instructors offered extra credit on the lab days designated for the mid-term exam in order to ensure that as many students as possible showed up to take the tests; some, but not all of the teachers, awarded extra credit for taking the final exam. Students, however, did not receive any type of in-class grade on the exams based on their lab exam scores for either the mid-term or the final. This was done in order to maintain the lowest possible anxiety level
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during the exam. In addition, students never received their exams, answers to the exams, or exam scores (a) to prevent them from comparing/ranking themselves among the classes and (b) to avoid affecting their levels of confidence, in keeping with the ideas presented in the Affective Filter
Hypothesis. I did not want students to resent the language lab, thereby raising the Affective Filter (described in Chapter II), which would hinder their learning of the target language. I wanted them to see lab sessions as a learning tool developed to help them and not to frighten them. Furthermore, I hoped that students would see the mid-term and final examinations as tests of their progress and not parts of their final averages. This was done in order to help them relax and avoid exam stress that affects many test takers.
Experimental Design
The type of language laboratory instruction served as the independent variable. Throughout the semester, the students participated in one of two types of language laboratory instruction, audio-only or audio-visual. All students participated in the two types of activities. A counterbalanced design, shown in
Table 3, was employed in order to randomize possible effects from situational variables. The three dependent variables were the number of errors on the listening, reading and listening/ reading combination subtests of the mid-term and final exams.
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One sample, non-directional, t-tests were separately applied to the combined scores on the mid-term and final exams to test the three hypotheses about audio-only versus audio-visual language learning laboratory activities and their effects on the skills of listening, reading and listening/reading comprehension in Spanish. When the morning group took the mid-term, they were receiving the audio-only treatment and the afternoon group was receiving the audio-visual practice. The reverse was true for the final exam: the morning group was participating in the audio-visual practice and the afternoon group was receiving the audio-only practice. In order to analyze the performance of students when they received the audio-only treatment, the mid-term scores for the morning group were combined with the final exam scores of the afternoon group. The total number of errors for the exams was evaluated. The number of errors was looked at separately for listening, reading and the combination of listening and reading. Scores for the final exams of the morning group and the mid-terms of the afternoon group were analyzed also in order to investigate the participants' performance when they received the audio-visual treatment. Again, the total number of errors for the exams was studied in addition to the number of errors for each of the three skills tested. T-tests were also employed, one for each statement on the pre/post-test surveys, to investigate whether participants' language lab activity impressions had changed after undergoing the two experimental treatments.
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Table 3
Experimental Design
Type of Instruction
Audio-Only
Audio-Visual
Mid-term Exam
Morning Group
Afternoon Group
Course Segment
Final Exam
Afternoon Group
Morning Group
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Researchers recommend t-tests over other types of measures, such as z tests (defined in Appendix G), for statistical procedures which contrast two different means (Hatch & Farhady, 1982). ANOVAs (analyses of variance) and
MANOVAs (multivariate analyses of variance) were not employed for interpreting the data of this study. Including a factor for each test type (audio-only, audiovisual, and audio-only and audio-visual combined) and using ANOVAs and
MANOVAs would have required that the three tests for skill be counterbalanced across the audio-only and audio-visual experimental conditions of the exam.
The degrees of freedom (df), defined in Appendix G, for the majority of the tests in this analysis were 55, unless otherwise indicated. In some instances, the df are less than 55 because one or two students did not respond to a particular question. The df did not fall below 54 for any given test. All participants answered all of the questions on the mid-term and final exams maintaining a df of 55 for each of the t-tests for skill.
For the survey statements, t-tests were used to test whether there was a statistically significant difference between the average pre-test survey item score and the average post-test survey item score. For all of the t-tests, the alpha level (defined in Appendix G) was .05.
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CHAPTER IV
RESULTS
Of the three t-tests for listening, reading and the combination of listening and reading, only data for the tests for reading reached significance; they were the only ones to have a p-value of less than .05. Table 4 contains the mean number of errors made on exams for both the audio-only and the audio-visual treatments for each of the three skills of listening, reading and the combination of listening and reading.
Skill Data
When students participated in the audio-only practice, they performed significantly better on the reading section of the mid-term and final exam. Table
4 shows that students made an average of 2.18 mistakes out of 10 possible when they received the audio-only treatment. When participants received the audio-visual treatment, the rate of errors was 3.04 out of 10. Therefore, participants averaged fewer errors by almost one point, or 10% of that section of the exam, when they received the audio-only treatment.
Test scores between the two practices (audio-only and audio-visual) were not significantly different for the skills of listening and the combination of listening and reading. When students received the audio-only treatment their
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Table 4
T-Tests for Skill
Skill
Results
Audio-Only means Audio-Visual means t(55)
Listening
Reading
3.6071
2.1786
Listening/Reading 3.1071
4.2143
3.0357
2.9643
•1.68
-2.12
.42
.099
<.05
.674
Note. The alpha level is .05. Means = number of errors. Significant results are printed in boldface type.
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average number of errors was lower not only for the previously described reading test, but also for listening. The number of errors was 0.6 fewer for listening. Their average number of errors was 3.61 and 4.21, respectively, out of a possible 10 errors. The results approached significance with a p = .099.
Although participants made fewer errors on tests for both the skills of listening and for reading when they took part in the audio-only practice, the data from Table 4 demonstrate that the opposite occurred when listening and reading were combined as a skill. Participants made .04 fewer errors on the listening/reading combination parts of the mid-term and final exams when they received the audio-visual treatment which, as stated previously, is not a significant difference in scores for treatment.
Results of Pre- and Post-Test Survevs
The t-tests indicate significant differences in responses on the Pre-Test versus the Post-Test Likert surveys for over 80% of the statements. Most of these significant differences occurred with items that made assertions about whether time in the lab was effective in improving students' listening and reading comprehension skills and which method-audio-only or audio-visual~was preferred. Results of t-tests for only three of the items, numbers five, eight and nine, proved to be non-significant. Two of these three questions referred to the effectiveness of audio-visual language learning activities in building the
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"passive" skills in Spanish; the third statement, item five, mentioned learning a language using TPR. Responses to Item five remained the same for both the pre- and post-test surveys. Responses showed less agreement on the post-test than on the pre-test questionnaire for item eight. The opposite occurred for item nine; responses on the pre-test survey moved from the "Neither agree nor disagree" category closer to "Agree." In general, responses to all of the Likert items stayed close to the neutral response of "Neither agree nor disagree."
Average scores did not move out of the 2-4 range, "Agree" to "Disagree," for any of the 11 Likert statements.
Table 5 lists the results of the t-tests for the Likert statement questionnaires, with significant results printed in boldface. In addition, the table lists the means for both sets of questionnaires and the t-values.
Opinions About General Usefulness of the Language
Learning Laboratorv
Results of the t-test for item one, *"The time I spend/spent in the language lab this semester will help/helped me to improve my listening comprehension skills in Spanish," reached significance. The means reveal that students, on average, answered "Agree" on the Pre-Test survey but revealed less agreement
Tor each of the Likert statements to be discussed, the Pre-Test statements are written in future and present tense/Post-Test statements are written in past tense.
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Table 5
T-Tests for Likert Item Responses
Results
Likert Statement Pre-Survey means Post-Survey means t(55) e i 4.1250 3.3750 482 < ^
2 3.9286 3.053 5.49 <.05
<.05
<.05
1.000
<.05
<.05
.249
.732
<.05
*11 3.9091 2.5091 7.66 <.05
Note. The alpha level is .05. Significant results are printed in bold-face.
* One participant left a Likert item blank, reducing the degrees of freedom to 54.
** Two participants left a Likert item blank, reducing the degrees of freedom to
53.
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to the statement about the lab after one semester of study. The means for the
Post-Test survey responses fall into the "Neither agree nor disagree" category.
The same phenomenon occurred for item two. Responses to the statement "The time I spend/spent in the language lab this semester will help/helped me to improve my reading comprehension skills," indicated less agreement on the post-test survey than on the pre-test.
Students' Preferred Language Learning Laboratorv Activitv
Before taking Spanish 1501 students were undecided about which language learning laboratory activity-audio-only or audio-visual~they favored.
However, by the end of the term, student responses to both items three and four were no longer neutral. Participants' responses to "I prefer to learn a language by visual (watching videos) methods," question three, showed more agreement with the item on the post-test than on the pre-test questionnaire. After completing both audio-only and audio-visual lab activities in one semester, students changed not only their neutral stance on their preference for visual methods of language learning but also on their feelings toward audio-only activities. For item four, "I prefer to learn a language by auditory (listening to tapes) methods," participants' responses to the post-test indicated less agreement to the question than their answers to the pre-test. During our lab
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sessions, participants also expressed to me openly, though anecdotally, that their preferred method of second language acquisition in the lab is audio-visual.
Participants responded neutrally on the pre-test to item six, "My favorite language lab activity this semester will be/was watching videos." By the end of the term, the general opinion of the students was consistent with their reply to item four; they prefer videos over cassette tapes with an average response of
"Agree."
Participants' Opinions About Audio-Onlv Treatment
Mean responses for survey item seven indicate that students' initial views of listening to cassette tapes were unfavorable, and they became more negative after finishing the experiment. The common response to the question on the pre-test was "Disagree," bordering on "Neither agree nor disagree." However, the post-test results revealed less agreement with the item "My favorite language lab activity this semester will be/was listening to cassette tapes" than on the pretest questionnaire. Students' mean response on the post-test fell into the range of "Disagree."
Opinions About Preferred Activitv for Building Listening and Reading Skills
Participants were impartial about pre-test survey items 10 and 11, but became more negative about the use of cassette tapes for acquisition of
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listening and reading comprehension skills in Spanish by the time they filled out the post-test. The means for pre-test question 10 changed from a neutral stance on the statement "Listening to cassette tapes will help/helped me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills" to a negative, "Disagree," on the post-test
The means for the post-test questionnaire demonstrate that students' general response was "Disagree." Participants' responses to item 10 moved 0.6 toward
"Disagree" from their original neutral answers, indicating distinctly more negative opinions about the usefulness of audio-only exercises for building listening comprehension.
From the pre-test means, it is possible to see that student responses were neutral but bordering on "Agree" to statement 11 "Listening to cassette tapes will help/helped me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills." After the semester-long experiment, student opinions changed. They revealed less agreement with the notion that building listening skills could aid in strengthening those of reading, producing an average response of "Disagree."
T-tests for statements five, eight and nine did not reach significance. For item five "I prefer to learn a language by kinesthetic (touch and body movements) methods," the means were exactly the same for both surveys: 3.27.
The means indicate a response of "Neither agree nor disagree" to the statement.
Students did not have a particular opinion as to whether they found the Natural
Method of teaching with the use of TPR effective or not, even after 15 weeks of
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receiving instruction in Spanish through the Natural Method. Item five did not ask about the usefulness of audio-only or audio-visual language learning laboratory exercises. This item was included on the questionnaire to investigate students' satisfaction level with TPR as a component of foreign language instruction.
For items eight and nine, there was a slight change in response from the pre- to the post-test. Participants answered "Agree" on the pre-test questionnaire to item eight, "Watching videos will help/helped me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills." The means for the post-test survey dropped from 4.0 to 3.8, which is classified as a neutral response, but which also approaches "Agree." Students' confidence in acquiring listening skills in
Spanish through the use of audio-visual procedures dropped slightly during the term but not enough to produce significant results. The ninth item, "Watching videos will help/helped me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills," produced non-significant results. Less than 0.1 difference occurred between the means of the pre- and post-test surveys, and results indicate an average score in the 3 range. Student responses moved closer to agreement with item nine from the pre- to the post-test, though both initial and final responses about video methods for acquiring a second language are classified in the neutral category.
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CHAPTER V
DISCUSSION
Tests For Skill
Reading Comprehension
Since the alpha level = .05 and p = .039, data from the t-tests for reading produced significant results. Therefore, null hypothesis two, "There is no difference in reading comprehension in the second language of students who receive systematic video cassette tape instruction or audio cassette instruction in the language laboratory," must be rejected. Results indicate that when students received audio-only language learning laboratory instruction, they made fewer errors by almost one point than when they received the audio-visual instruction.
Participants' higher scores for the skill of reading when they received the audio-only treatment is not consistent with contemporary research findings.
Less research has been conducted concerning the effects of video on the development of reading skills In the target language than has been done with listening. As noted in Chapter II, results of investigations conducted before the
1980s were less favorable regarding the use of audio-visual language learning laboratory activities. Early research from the 1960s, when audio-visual aids were filmstrips and projectors, recommended audio-visual teaching tools only for teaching culture. Current research, however, favors audio-visual activities for reading comprehension. Researchers such as Lund (1991) and Ciccone (1995)
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support using videos to build reading comprehension. Lund equates video images with written cognates. He parallels the decoding of visual cues with the translation of written language and states that practicing the former reinforces skills in the latter. Ciccone (1995) encourages the combination of authentic video material with authentic reading material. Such authentic materials create
"meaningful, interesting language" (p. 209) for students, which he deems necessary for enrichment of both listening and reading comprehension skills.
Current research reinforces the idea that video learning programs maintain learners' attention, which is necessary for their progress in acquiring the target language. However, research into the use of video for building skills in listening and reading comprehension looks at the use of video in the classroom (Meunier-
Cinko, 1992; Altman, 1989; Ciccone, 1995; Secules, Herron & Tomasello, 1992) rather than comparing video with other language learning laboratory activities.
Although the use of video in the classroom is a welcome addition to in-class activities, the results of this study indicate that it is less effective than audio-only language learning laboratory activities for building reading comprehension skills.
Listening Comprehension
The most surprising aspect of the non-significant outcomes concerns the tests for listening comprehension. Results from the t-tests for listening do not allow the rejection of null hypothesis one, "There is no difference in the listening comprehension in the second language of students who receive systematic
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video cassette tape instruction or audio cassette tape instruction In the language learning laboratory." These results contradict current second language listening comprehension research. The trend for listening went in the same direction as the one for reading, which favored the audio-only treatment.
Participants listened to the same type of speech, referred to as "oral presentation of a fixed, rehearsed script" (Byrnes, 1984, p. 319) during their language lab sessions for both the audio-only and audio-visual treatments.
However, the amount of cognitive effort necessary for each treatment differed.
When students received the audio-only treatment of Destines, they had to rely completely on the aural cues provided in each episode to fill in the details of the setting and context of the story. During the audio-visual treatment participants had both aural and visual cues. If they did not hear or understand a particular word or phrase in a dialogue the participants could figure out the missed part of the dialogue and/or its meaning from the video's visual context. Because audiovisual activities appeal to both hearing and sight, less cognitive effort in listening is necessary for watching videos than for listening to audio cassette tapes
(Shatzer, 1990). The extra cognitive effort in listening that was required of the students in the Destines experiment during the audio-only treatment was not enough to affect significantly the tests for listening most likely because participants in this experiment were only listening for global understanding rather than specific details.
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As stated in Chapter II, audio-visual language learning laboratory activities, such as the Destines telenevela series used for this experiment and its predecessor, French in Action, were produced with the explicit purpose of replacing the audio-only, cassette tape, exercises for language learning. It was believed by those who developed the video series and current researchers in the field of second language acquisition (Lund, 1990; Chung, 1994; Secules, Herron
& Tomasello, 1992) that audio-visual language laboratory exercises were better than the audio-only exercises for improving listening comprehension among foreign language students.
The experiment I conducted with the Destines telenevela series was similar to the one conducted with the French in Action (FIA) video series, described In Chapter II. Both studies looked at acquiring listening comprehension skills in a Romance language through the use of audio-visual means. The French in Action story format is similar to that of Destines. In both videos, the characters are native speakers in countries where the target language is spoken. English is spoken in the videos only during short breaks in the story line when a narrator explains new vocabulary and grammar. In the classroom, the FIA students and the Destinos group received instruction in a form of the Direct Method. The FIA and Destines studies both used university students in beginning semesters of foreign language study.
Although the studies had similarities, the results for the studies differed.
Participants from the video-watching group in the FIA analysis had significantly
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higher listening comprehension scores than the control group, whereas tests for listening scores for participants in the Destinos group did not reach significance.
Furthermore, scores for listening In the Destines study were lower for the audiovisual than for the audio-only treatment. Destines participants produced significantly higher reading comprehension scores when they received the audio-only treatment while reading scores for the experimental and control groups of the FIA study were equal.
A variety of differences exist which could explain why data for listening from the FIA experiment reached significance while that from the Destinos study did not. First, the experimental designs and procedures differed for each of the two investigations. The FIA experiment compared two groups of students, both in their second semester of French. One group of students used the video series while the other group of students, the control group, did not receive any form of language laboratory activities. The Destinos analysis used a quasi within-subjects research design. The FIA study compared one group of students to another group while the Destinos experiment allowed each student to be his or her own control. The possibility exists that participants in the experimental
FIA group had a stronger aptitude for French and, therefore, performed better on their listening comprehension exams due to aptitude rather than effect for treatment. Destinos participants received both types of treatment, in contrast to the FIA students who participated in only one type of practice. Destinos students' scores were measured by treatment. The FIA participants' exam
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scores for each of the two treatments were compared using exam scores for an experimental versus a control group. In addition, FIA students had the opportunity to view 17 videos while the Destinos pupils saw only 10.
Participants in the FIA Investigation watched dramatic sections of the videos twice as compared to only once for the Destines participants. Thus, participants in the experimental group for the FIA investigations received more video exposure than the Destinos group. The FIA experimental group had a greater opportunity to listen to native speakers of their target language and to hear some dialogues twice. The extra listening and video experience, coupled with the fact that the FIA investigation compared the experimental group with students who received no language learning laboratory instruction (versus the Destinos experiment's participants who served as their own controls) could account for the listening scores in the FIA experiment reaching significance while those in the Destinos investigation did not.
The FIA and Destinos studies also differed in the types of materials used.
Students in the FIA experimental group used all of the materials designed to accompany the French in Action video series in the form of cassette tapes, workbooks and textbooks. Students in the Destinos study were limited to the videos and Study Guides and a textbook that was not developed specifically for the telenevela series. In addition, the FIA students used texts designed especially to reinforce and enhance the lessons they received through the
French In Action videos.
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The FIA study did not yield significant results for reading when scores for the control and experimental groups were compared. Secules, Herron and
Tomasello (1992) note that they had to limit the amount of time dedicated to teaching reading for the experimental group due to the class time spent watching videos; these researchers do not specify how much reading instruction time actually occurred. If the video-watching group's reading instruction had not been limited, results for reading might have been significant.
The authors of the FIA experiment do not mention whether or not the participants of their study received any type of incentive for participation, neither do they mention a problem due to a lack of commitment on the part of the students. The Destinos experiment suffered from the poor attendance of participants on test days. If the participants in the FIA experiment had received any type of incentive for participation or if their performance on the exams had affected their semester averages, this could have contributed to the disparities between the two studies. The FIA experiment's participants might have been more committed to the experiment they participated in than the students of the
Destinos group and more concerned with their performance on exams.
While the two studies differed, they may have suffered limitations because both used only one type of video learning series. In order to compare video learning to another form of learning, it should not be assumed that one type of video learning series represents all of the video learning programs. Each learning program, no matter the medium of learning (such as video or audio) has
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its own strengths and weaknesses. Nonetheless, the FIA and Destinos experiments brought attention to contemporary language learning methods and their effectiveness. More research needs to be conducted involving audio-only versus audio-visual language acquisition methods, rather than audio-visual versus an absence of language laboratory activities, at each of the introductory levels of foreign language instruction.
Listening/Reading Comprehension
An interesting outcome of the analysis occurred with the results of the listening/reading combination scores, which did not yield significant results.
Scores on the listening and reading comprehension sections of the mid-term and final exams were higher for both the skills of listening and reading when students received audio-only treatment. Such outcomes would lead one to predict that when listening and reading were combined as a section on the exams, scores would continue to be higher during audio-only treatment, especially when one considers research from Townsend, Carrithers and Bever (1987). According to these authors in their article "Listening and Reading in College and Middle-
School-Aged Readers," the processes of listening and reading employ similar strategies by skilled and average readers. In addition, deficits in reading skills also tend to occur in listening skills. O'Maggio-Hadley (1993) adds that listening and reading share a common purpose: "to generate the intended image from the input and to react appropriately. The reaction may be physical, emotional or
73

intellectual in nature" (p. 165). Accordingly, one might suspect that when listening and reading were combined on an exam, scores would be significantly higher when participants received the audio-only treatment than when listening and reading were presented as individual sections. However, as noted previously, scores for the listening/reading portion of the exams did not yield significant results. Learners made fewer errors on the listening/reading section when they were given the audio-visual treatment. Therefore, null hypothesis three, which states "There is no difference in the combination of listening and reading comprehension in the second language of students who receive systematic video cassette tape instruction or audio cassette tape instruction in the language learning laboratory," must be accepted. The difference in exam scores for treatment for the listening/reading section of the exams was most likely due to common random variation and not an effect created by either of the two types of treatment. However, the trend for the results of the listening/reading portions of the exams went in the opposite direction of the trends for listening and reading.
The acceptance of the null hypothesis for listening and the combination of listening and reading is consistent with Kasper and Morris' (1988) findings about first language (described in Chapter II). Reading test results are compatible with those of Stack (1971), who suggested the use of cassette tapes as a tool for reading in the second language. However, the results for the three skills of listening, reading and listening/reading combined contradict current research
74

into second language acquisition in the field of linguistics and seem to contradict the guiding principles of this experiment, which came from the field of psychology. The guiding principles (introduced in Chapter II) were based on
Pinker's (1987) "Bootstrapping Hypothesis" and Braine's (1988) "sieve memory" for first language acquisition. The ideas presented in these two first language acquisition models suggest that the richer situational context audio-visual exercises provide would make them more effective than audio-only exercises in adult acquisition of syntax in listening and reading in the second language.
However, first language acquisition concerns children's acquisition of language.
Children typically learn to speak before they learn to read. Thus, there is no research into children's acquisition of reading skills occurring at the same time listening skills are learned that could be compared with the simultaneous acquisition of reading and listening skills in the second language.
Children's needs for listening tend to be greater than that of adults because children, five to six years of age, do not normally read and must, therefore, rely more on their listening skills than adults. The difference in the use of situational context among first language learners and second language students could be the reason that results of the Destines experiment do not fit with Braine and Pinker's language acquisition models. Another possible explanation is that the mid-term and final exams did not test syntax or grammatical rules independently, so it is difficult ascertain whether students'
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scores for comprehension were significantly affected by their comparatively limited knowledge of grammar and syntax in Spanish.
Student Opinions about the Language Learning Laboratorv
Significant Results
Results of the t-tests for the pre- and post-test questionnaires produced significant results for eight of the 11 items. Responses to both items one and two, which dealt with whether time in the language lab would be useful for building listening and reading skills, revealed that students had less confidence in the efficacy of the language lab after one semester of lab instruction than before. Questions concerning the usefulness of and/or preference for video for language instruction, numbers three and six, were the only responses to change from a preliminary "Neither agree nor disagree" to a favorable "Agree" from the pre- to the post-test survey. Students' responses to item seven demonstrated that they were more certain on the post-test than on the pre-test that they would not prefer cassette tapes over video tapes as a language lab activity. Items four,
10 and 11, which deal with the usefulness and/or preference for audio-only activities in the language learning laboratory, were the only ones to change from a neutral stance to a negative "Disagree.
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students' Opinions About General Usefulness of Language Lab
Items one and two referred to whether the time students spent in the language learning laboratory would enrich their receptive skills in Spanish.
Students' responses revealed less agreement on the post-test than on the pretest. Means for responses moved from the "Agree" category to "Neither agree nor disagree." During our lab sessions, students demonstrated a preference for watching the videos. They seemed to enjoy the soap opera format and paid close attention to the plot. Participants did not seem distracted by other students or homework when they were watching the videos. This supports
Huebner (1967), who says that digressions do not occur when pupils are watching a video segment. Learners often asked questions after class that dealt with the characters' lives and relationships, rather than with grammar or new vocabulary. Some students seemed to become involved in Destinos like they would a true soap opera. As with the FIA study mentioned earlier (Secules,
Herron & Tomasello, 1992), students looked forward to each episode of the videos. Although the story line was presented in the target language, participants understood what was happening in each episode. They participated more actively and produced more correct answers during the <j Tienes buena
memoria? discussion that followed each Destines viewing than participants who only listened to the episodes. Students did not complain about watching the videos. In addition, at various times during the semester participants commented that the grammar topics presented in the videos reinforced the
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grammar lessons that Stein lectured about in her weekly meetings with them.
Furthermore, students asked me near the end of the semester how they could continue to see the videos once the experiment ended.
When participants received the audio-only treatment, their opinions of
Destinos were different. They seemed distracted during our lab sessions, less interested in the story line than when they listened to and watched Destinos. I found students falling asleep on more than one occasion. The characters in
Destinos seemed less interesting and, therefore, less real to them. Participants openly expressed to me their partiality for the videos and their dislike for the cassettes. They complained that they did not understand what happened during the episodes they listened to. Students participated less in the discussion of the
^Tienes buena memoria? pages and produced more incorrect answers than the participants who watched the videos. Their change in opinion from a positive
"Agree" on the pre-test to a neutral answer of "Neither agree nor disagree" on the post-test for the questions that dealt with the general usefulness of the language laboratory probably reflected the students' dislike for the audio-only treatment.
Students' Favored Language Lab Activities
Responses to questions three, four, six and seven, that ask which language learning laboratory activity the students preferred, support the idea presented above that participants enjoyed the audio-visual treatment and had an
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aversion to the audio-only practice. Students' responses on the pre-test for items three and four were neutral. Answers on the post-test changed to "Agree" for the statement "I prefer to learn a language by visual (watching videos) methods" (question three) and "Disagree" for item four which says, "I prefer to learn a language by auditory (listening to tapes) methods." For question six,
"My favorite language lab activity this semester will be watching videos," again, the initial response changed from a neutral one to an answer in more agreement with the post-test statement "My favorite language lab activity this semester was watching videos." Answers to question seven, "My favorite language lab activity this semester will be/was listening to cassette tapes" shifted from a response of
"Disagree" but almost neutral, to a decisive "Disagree" when the participants completed the post-test questionnaire.
Students embraced the activity that was more like watching television than listening to the radio or a book on tape. According to Huebner (1967), one might expect that students would prefer the audio-visual exercises over the cassette tapes since "students connect television with a pleasurable expectation and a positive-feeling tone" (p. 97). Huebner (1967) encourages the use of audio-visual instruction for reasons that the participants demonstrated last semester. An audio-visual activity holds attention...the isolation of the student from his fellows; the movement and rapid change in the picture compel almost complete attention. There is a double impact of sight and sound...Motion, sound, and color heighten reality...it is informative, instructional, emotional, and stimulating, (p. 50)
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Although students did not perform significantly better in reading or listening in
Spanish, they enjoyed the audio-visual activities more than the audio-only ones.
They paid closer attention to the episodes of Destinos when they were able to watch and listen to them. Therefore, it is possible that students learned more culture and vocabulary from the audio-visual treatment, items that the mid-term and final exams did not test for.
Lab Activity Preferences for Listening and Reading Comprehension
Responses to questions 10 and 11 reveal that students' original neutral feelings toward the audio-only and audio-visual treatments became explicit preferences for the videos and dislike for the audio-only treatment. Items 10 and
11 refer to the use of cassette tapes for strengthening skills in listening and reading comprehension, respectively. Students' pre-test responses were neutral. By the post-test, participants disagreed with the assertions that audioonly activities would improve their listening and reading skills in Spanish.
Although the response for post-test item 10, "Listening to cassette tapes this semester helped me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills," was only
0.3 away from a neutral response, the change from the pre- to the post-test was
0.6. This change was significant, indicating the participants' obvious dislike for and disbelief in the usefulness of the audio-only exercises.
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Non-Significant Results
In spite of the fact that the results from item eight, "Watching videos will help/helped me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills," did not reach significance, the mean responses are consistent with responses to the other survey items: students prefer the videos. The pre- and post-test responses for item eight both fell into the range of "Agree," though they moved toward less agreement on the post-test.
The results of comparisons between pre- and post-test survey item five, which deals with the use of kinesthetic methods for language instruction, and item nine, which concerns the use of videos to build reading skills, did not reach significance. For item five "I prefer to learn a language by kinesthetic (touch and body movement) methods," the mean responses for the pre- and the post-test were the same and fit in the category of "Neither agree nor disagree." These data neither support nor contradict the previously presented student opinions because item five does not deal with the types of activities performed in the language lab. This item was included on the pre- and post-test surveys to investigate whether students were satisfied with the TPR component of the
Natural Method employed in the classroom. The average response for both the
Pre- and Post-Test questions for item nine, "Watching videos will help/helped me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills," was "Neither agree nor disagree" but moved toward agreement from the pre- to the post-test questionnaire.
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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
This study investigated whether the traditionally used audio-only or the more modern audio-visual language learning laboratory activities would be more effective in helping students build skills in listening and reading comprehension in Spanish. In addition, the study sought to find out which of the two aforementioned language lab activities students preferred.
Results from this experiment demonstrate that students performed significantly better on the reading comprehension section of the mid-term and the final exams when they received the audio-only practice. However, responses on the pre- and post-test surveys consistently confirm that participants not only preferred the videos but they also believed that they were more effective than the audio-only exercises. Participants were distracted when they were only listening to a lesson. They missed details about what was happening in the story and quickly became bored with the activity. On the other hand, when learners watched the videos, they became absorbed in the story and they forgot that they were in a language course. They could also recall more details, such as names and events, of each episode. Watching Destinos was a pleasurable experience that many students wanted to continue even after completing Spanish 1501.
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Although students demonstrated a significant preference for audio-visual activities, I recommend the use of cassette tapes over videotapes for second language lab instruction, especially in situations where acquisition of reading skills in the target language is a main objective of instruction. Students are not always as aware of their instructional needs as their instructional preferences.
They will say that their preferred method of learning is also a more effective way for them to learn, whether it is or not, as they did in the case of survey items nine and ten. Students indicated more agreement with item nine, which stated that watching videos would aid them in strengthening their reading skills, and less agreement with item ten, which stated that their reading comprehension skills would be improved with the use of cassette tapes. However, as previously mentioned, students' reading comprehension skills were aided significantly more with the use of cassette tapes than with videos. Because of the participants' strong preference for videotapes, and the possibility that videos will enhance their knowledge of culture and vocabulary, I suggest the incorporation of audiovisual activities to accompany, but not replace, audio-only activities in the language lab. An added side-benefit of videos is that of lowering the affective filter during language laboratory sessions.
T-tests for listening and the combination of listening and reading failed to produce significant results, though significant results occurred when reading was tested individually, as noted above. Participants made fewer listening errors, though not significantly fewer, when they received the audio-only treatment,
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which is contrary to what contemporary research about listening suggests
(Secules, Herron & Tomasello, 1992; Altman, 1989; Meunier-Cinko, 1992;
Ciccone, 1995). Audio-visual language learning exercises such as Destines and
French in Action were developed specifically to improve listening comprehension skills in the second language and to replace cassette tape activities.
A study like the Destinos experiment conducted for two or even all four beginning semesters in a foreign language might produce more significant results. Degree requirements for all Arts and Sciences majors include the equivalent of two semesters of sophomore-level foreign language. Many students must take the two prerequisite freshman-level courses of foreign language before they enter the sophomore-level courses. The first two semesters of foreign language study at Texas Tech, the freshman-level courses, emphasize conversational Spanish with a de-emphasis on grammar. The third and fourth semesters of Spanish, the sophomore-level courses, continue to focus on conversational skills while emphasizing reading in the second language. Charting the progress of the listening, reading and listening/reading skills of subjects during four semesters of foreign language instruction could yield results more like those of the French in Action study in which significant results for listening were obtained.
If this study were to be repeated with new participants, it should not only be conducted for a longer period of time, but some measures should also be taken to solicit more commitment to the experiment from the participants
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regarding attendance and performance on exams. Students could be assigned attendance grades on the days that the pre- and post-test surveys and the midterm and final exams are administered as an incentive for attending class on those days. The group sample for the Destines study dropped from 112 eligible participants to 56, mainly because of student truancy on the day(s) that one or more of the aforementioned forms/exams were completed. Participants could also receive some type of grade for performance on the mid-term and final exams. Students in the Destinos experiment did not have difficulties finishing their exams in the allotted time. I speculate that many participants rushed through the exams because they knew that their scores would neither help nor hurt them. If their scores affected their semester grades, students might have taken more time to check their tests for errors before turning them in. Students whose grades were affected by their lab attendance, especially on days that data would be collected from them, and whose grades were affected by their performance on the exams taken in the language learning laboratory, would most likely be more committed students. More dedicated participants could create a stronger study.
Future studies should vary the structure of the exams students take. The
Destinos students' mid-term and final exams employed the same exam format, with listening comprehension questions first, followed by listening and reading combined tasks, and, finally reading passages and comprehension questions.
Students in the Destines experiment may have had higher reading scores
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because they took the reading section of the exam last and had time to "warm up" their Spanish skills while completing the listening and listening/reading parts of the exams. If this study were to be repeated, the order of the tests for skill should vary from the mid-term to the final. Also, three different tests which have the same questions, but with an altered order for the tests for each skill could be administered. For instance, participants could take one of three mid-terms, of one of the following formats: listening, reading, listening/reading; reading, listening/reading, listening; listening/reading, listening, reading. Participants would take only one mid-term and one final but the exam format variable would be controlled. However, there would need to be three separate rooms for both the mid-term and final exams or three different testing times for each exam in order to have students take the listening sections of the tests in a different order.
Further research might allow students to listen to and/or watch the
Destinos series outside of class, depending on which treatment they are receiving. This would give them the opportunity to re-play and pause over sections of episodes they do not understand. Student motivation would become a factor in an experiment that allowed students to review episodes on their own time. Participants who were motivated to learn Spanish might review episodes of the telenevela multiple times while less eager students would probably watch or listen to the Destinos episodes that were shown to them only during lab sessions. A count of the number of times students watched or listened to each episode would need to be recorded to find whether extra exposure to the
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episodes significantly affected students' acquisition of particular skills (such as listening, reading, speaking and writing) in Spanish, and which skills were affected the most. In order to keep students' minds from wandering during the episodes, future study guide/workbooks should have exercises that students do during the episodes, as well as the activities they complete before and after each episode. These exercises could be multiple choice or matching, with more specific questions than the ones included in the Preparacidn and ^ Tienes buena
memoria? sections, and could inlcude grammar and/or vocabulary building exercises.
In general, students' responses to the post-test surveys as compared with the pre-test indicate that their initial Ideas about the type of treatment they would receive were neutral. After completing both the audio-only and the audio-visual activities, two general findings surfaced: (1) students' impartial opinions turned into definitive ones which displayed a preference for audio-visual learning; (2) participants' initial positive ideas about the language learning laboratory, in general, became neutral.
While fulfilling course requirements for the four-semester period that students study Spanish, they spend a considerable amount of time in the language learning laboratory since all four Introductory levels of Spanish include language laboratory activities. Therefore, providing learners with effective, enjoyable activities in the language lab merits further research into improving and developing more effective and more interesting learning materials.
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students' vocabulary acquisition and speaking skills in Spanish might have been positively affected by the videos. The richer context that the visual component of the videos provided may have significantly affected the amount of new vocabulary learned and the acquisition of student's speaking skills in the target language. The mid-term and final exams that the students took did not test for these items because the tests were designed to examine comprehension skills, rather than syntactic and communicative ones. Some participants may have missed a question because they did not understand all of the words in the true/false or multiple choice questions, but they were not asked to indicate this as a part of their exam. Students' speaking skills would not have affected their mid-term or final exam scores. Future studies should investigate how the use of audio-only versus audio-visual language learning laboratory materials affects students' acquisition of speaking skills and new vocabulary. An additional component to examine would be the grammatical knowledge participants gain from the two types of language lab activities. A repeat of the Destinos experiment may find that video-watching students from the Destines study achieve a better knowledge of grammatical structures than audio-only students, as the FIA study found. Such results would be congruent with the guiding principles (Braine and Pinker) of this study.
Further research might also inquire into the usefulness of different video learning series and even more contemporary language learning laboratory tools such as computer-assisted learning and the CD-ROM. Future studies could
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investigate whether or not language learning laboratory activities are more effective when students perform them individually, where language learning is their personal responsibility, or as a class, when they might be distracted by the presence of other students. Further research might also look at the effects language laboratory exercises have on the "active" (Barnett, 1989) skills of speaking and writing.
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APPENDIX A: PRE-TEST SURVEY
Pre-Test Survey Questions:
1. The time I spend in the language lab this semester will help me to improve my listening comprehension skills in Spanish.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
2. The time I spend in the language lab this semester will help me to improve my reading comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
3. 1 prefer to learn a language by visual (watching videos) methods.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
4. 1 prefer to learn a language by auditory (listening to tapes) methods.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
5. 1 prefer to learn a language by kinesthetic (touch and body movement) methods.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
6. My favorite language lab activity will be watching videos.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
7. My favorite language lab activity will be listening to cassette tapes.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
8. Watching videos will help me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
9. Watching videos will help me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
10. Listening to cassette tapes will help me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
11. Listening to cassette tapes will help me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
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APPENDIX B: PRE-TEST DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONNAIRE
Affective Survey of the Language Laboratory at Texas Tech University
Pre-Test
The purpose of this form Is to study student attitudes toward the activities and requirements of the Language Learning Laboratory. Your instructor, other than your lab instructor, will not see these surveys.
Demographic Information:
Sex: M F
Age: (Circle one) 18-24 25-35 36-50 51+
Are you taking Spanish: (Check one)
( ) To fulfill a degree requirement.
( ) For personal interest.
( ) other, please specify.
1. Have you studied a foreign language previously?
If yes, please indicate: (If no, go to number 2.)
A. What language?
B. Where did you study this language?
C. How long did you study it?
D. Were you required to spend time in a language laboratory?
If you answered yes to letter D, please answer the following questions. (If you answered no, skip to number 2.)
1). What types of activities were required of you in the language laboratory? listening to tapes watching videos working computer exercises workbook exercises other (please specify):
My reading comprehension skills improved as a result of going to the language lab.
Strongly Agree Agree Mildly Agree Mildly Disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
My listening comprehension skills improved as a result of going to the language lab.
Strongly Agree Agree Mildly Agree Mildly Disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
2. Were you aware when you signed up for this course that you would be required to go to the language learning laboratory this semester?
Please indicate level of knowledge of languages other than English in the areas of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
1=native 2= near native 3=good 4=fair 5=poor
Speaking Listening Reading Writing
Language 1 .
Language 2
Language 3
Language 4
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APPENDIX C: MID-TERM EXAM
Nombre
Listening and Reading Comprehension Exam I
I. Parte oral
A. Listen to a description of some of Elena's activities. Then match the activity and time.
1. Hablamos mam^ y yo A. Los viernes a las cinco de la tarde
2. Voy al mercado B. Los lunes a las siete de la tarde
3. Vamos a la iglesia C. Los mi^rcoles a las once de la mafiana
4. Estudio inform^tica D. Los domingos a las ocho de la mailana
B. Listen as a typical student talks about a day in his life. As you listen complete the following chart with the missing details.
: a la universidad
8:00 :
: ingles
3:30
6:00
: en la cafeteria
C. Listen to the following description of Miguel and answer True or False to the questions that follow the narration.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
D. Listen to the following description of Jaime and answer True or False to the questions that follow the narration.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
II. Lectura
A. Read the following passage about Raquel Rodriguez, with whom you are familiar from the
Destinos series, and answer the multiple choice questions that follow. Definitions for the words in bold face are listed at the end of the passage.
Raquel Rodriguez
Raquel Rodriguez es una abogada mexicoamericana. Es soitera. Es una mujer muy inteligente. Es sensible, sincera y generosa con sus amigos y coiegas. Tambi§n tiene mucha imaginaci6n. A veces, es un poco impaciente. En sus rates libres, le gusta ir de compras y leer novelas. Los padres de Raquel viven en Los Angeles. Est^n jubllados. Raquel es la unica hija y su madre se mete mucho en su vida. Las dos se pelean con frecuencia. Pero Raquel quiere mucho a sus padres y los visita regularamente. Raquel tambi§n tiene familia en M6xico.
Raquel conocio a Pedro Castillo en M6xico. El bufete donde Raquel trabaja tiene una
sucursal allf. Pedro ha tenido mucho contacto con esa oficina y siempre ha admirado el trabajo
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de Raquel. For eso, Pedro se puso en contacto con Raquel cuando don Fernando revel6 su secrete de la carta. Ella acept6 el case Inmediatamente.
Raquel estS muy emocionada perque 6ste es su primer viaje a Espaf^a. Pero ^va a encontrar a Teresa Su^rez, la mujer que escribi6 una carta a don Fernando? Y a Rosarie, ^la primera esposa de den Fernando? soitera-single sensible-sensitive A veces-Sometimes rates-free time ir de compras- to go shopping jubilades-retired Onica-enly se mete mucho- gets very involved se pelean- fight quiere-leves cenoci6-met bufete-law office sucursal-branch office ha tenido- has had ha admirado-has admired emocionada- excited va a encontrar- is she going to find?
Before going on to answer questions about the passage, please indicate whether you have seen this passage before and whether or not you have previously read it by making checks in the appropriate blanks.
Yes, I have seen this passage before today.
No, I have net seen this passage before today.
Yes, I have read this passage before today.
No, I have net read this passage before today.
Comprehension questions
Choose the correct response to complete the following sentences.
1. A Raquel le gusta
A. ir al cine C. leer novelas
B. cecinar D. escuchar musica
2. Raquel tiene familia en M6xice y en
A. Espafia C. Colombia
B. Los estades unidos (USA) D. Italia
3. Pedro Castillo el trabajo de Raquel.
A. es muy emocionante de C. se pelea con Fernando de
B. admira D. es un poco impaciente con
4. se puso en contacto con Raquel concernando el case de don Fernando y el secrete de la carta.
A. Teresa Su^rez C. Resario
B. Den Fernando D. Pedro Castillo
5. Raquel su primer viaje a Espafia.
A. est^ emocionada de C. no quiere hacer
B. escribi6 una carta de D. no habla de
B. Read the following passage about don Fernando, with whom you are familiar from the Destinos series, and answer the multiple choice questions that follow. Definitions for the words in bold face are listed at the end of the passage.
Den Fernando
Para su familia, don Fernando es una persona buena y generosa. Pero cuando era joven, era un hembre muy dure y ambiciese. Cuando Ileg6 a Mexico, despu6s de la Guerra Civil espanela, no tenia nada. En pocos afios se convirti6 en un gran industrial, pero...hay muchas personas que no tienen precisamente buenos recuerdos de 61.
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Den Fernando adera a su familia. Tambi^n le gusta mucho su papel de patriarca de la familia. Tiene gran influencia sebre sus hijes.
Es curiose, pero den Fernando nunca habla de su pasado. Nace en Bilbao, una ciudad en el nerte de Espafia. Se casa muy joven con Resario. Despues de la beda, los dos viven en
Guernica. Cuando cemienza la Guerra Civil, Fernando es soldado del ej6rclto republicane.
Despu6s del bembardee de Guernica, busca desesperadamente a Resario, pero no la encuentra.
Cree que Resario est^ muerta. Per eso se va a Madrid y al final de la Guerra tema un barco con destine a Mexico.
Den Fernando nunca le habl6 de Resario a Carmen, su segunda esposa, ni al reste de su familia. Pero Carmen siempre crey6 que 61 tenia un gran secrete- ^un gran amor?- en Espafia.
Los hijes no sospechaban nada. Cuando don Fernando recibi6 una carta de Espafia, decidib buscar a Resario. Asf cemenz6 la busqueda de Raquel. despues de- after recuerdos- memories papel- role Nace- He is born
Se casa- He marries ej6rcite- army ni-ner Asf- Thus, In that way la busqueda- search, quest
Before going en to answer questions about the passage, please indicate whether you have seen this passage before and whether or net you have previously read it by making checks in the appropriate blanks.
Yes, I have seen this passage before today.
No, I have not seen this passage before today.
Yes, I have read this passage before today.
No, I have net read this passage before today.
Comprehension Questions
Choose the correct response to complete the following sentences.
1. Cuando don Fernando era joven, 61 era .
A. bueno C. ambiciese
B. religiose D. patriarce
2. Despues de la Guerra Civil espafiola, den Fernando .
A. tenia mucho dinero C. se cenvirti6 en ranchero
B. no tenia nada D. hizo muchos amigos
Despues de la beda, den Fernando y su esposa viven en .
A. Bilbao C. Guerra
B. La Ciudad de M6xico D. Guernica
Despues del bembardee de Guernica, den Fernando .
A. encuentra a Rosarie en M6xico C. busca a Resario, pero no la encuentra
B. encuentra a Rosarie en Madrid D. busca a Resario y la encuentra en
M6xico
5. Carmen siempre crey6 que den Fernando tenia un gran secrete en Espafia. Carmen cree que este secrete posiblemente es .
A. un amor C. otra identidad
B. etres hijes D. una fortuna secreta
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APPENDIX D: FINAL EXAM
Nombre
Listening and Reading Comprehension Final Exam
I. Parte oral
A. Listen to the following passage. Then answer True or False to the questions you hear after the narration. You will hear the passage two times.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
B. Listen to the following passage. Then answer True or False to the questions you hear after the narration. You will hear the passage two times.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
C. Listen as the narrator repeats the details of Teresa Su^rez's daily routine. Check off her activities en the following list.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5. cerrer ir a la farmacia ir al mercado comprar un cuD6n de loterfa ver la televisi6n
D. New listen as the speaker adds mere details about what Sra. Suclrez dees every day. Compare them with the following statements made by Sra. Su^rez . Are the statements you hear en the tape true or false?
1. Me despierto a las echo.
2. Me levante en unes minutes, a las echo y cuarte.
3. Desayune y prepare el desayune de Federice a las echo y media.
4. Me viste despu6s de desayunar.
5. Me acuesto temprano, a las diez generalmente.
II. Lectura
A. Read the following passage about Manuel Diaz, with whom you are familiar from the Destinos series, and answer the multiple choice questions below it. Definitions for the words in bold print face are listed at the end of the text.
Manuel Dfaz
Manuel Dfaz es un maestro come muchos otros. Lleva una vida ordenada y sencilla.
Vive en un pequefie apartamento, con un gato muy viejo que se llama Tigre. Sigue desde hace anos la misma rutina y detesta las situaciones inesperadas.
El Sr. Dfaz es una persona muy reservada. No le gusta hablar de s( mismo. Cuando esta con personas que no cenece bien, prefiere hablar de temas generales. Vive solo y tiene
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muchas manias. Su repa, per ejemple, tiene que estar siempre bien planchada, y no soporta la mOsica mederna. Pero a pesar de esas manias, es muy simp6tice, especialmente cuando se le conoce bien.
A Manuel le gusta mucho la literature. Ha lefdo casi todes los cISsices per le menes dos veces. Tambi6n es apasionade del arte, especialmente de la pintura cl^sica. Sus pintores favorites sen Goya y Velazquez.
Hasta ahera, su Cinice lujo ha side la 6pera. No se pierde ni una representaci6n. Ahora que tiene un poco de dinero, va a poder realizar finalmente une de sus sueflos: visitar los grandes teatres del mundo, come la Escala de Milan, el Metropolitano de Nueva York o el teatre Col6n de
Buenos Aires. ^Ya tiene el viaje planeade? sencilla-simple desde hace afios-for many years inesperadas-unexpected de sf misme-about himself solo-alone planchada-irened no seperta-he can't stand a pesar de-in spite of se le cenece bien-you get to knew him well Ha lefde-He has read lujo ha side-luxury has been No se pierde ni-He never misses suefies-dreams
Choose the correct response to complete the following sentences based en what you have just read.
1. Manuel Dfaz tiene una vida .
A. sencilla C. aburrida
B. luja D. detestable
2. Cuando el Sr. Dfaz est^ con personas que no conoce bien, prefiere discutir .
A. sus manfas C. temas generales
B. Goya y Velazquez D. mOsica mederna
A Manuel le gustan y la literatura.
A. la pintura cl6sica C. la mOsica mederna
B. las pinturas de Monet D. los libres de Stephen King
Ahora que tiene un poco de dinero, Manuel puede realizar su suene de
A. comprar arte del Metropolitano C. visitar los grandes teatres del mundo
B. visitar a su madre en Buenos Aires D. comprar un coche nuevo
B. Read the following passage about Martfn Iglesias and answer the multiple choice questions below it. Definitions for the words in bold face are listed at the end of the text.
Martfn Iglesias
Martfn Iglesias tenia una estancia pr6spera en su pals, la Argentina. Cuando termin6 la
Guerra Civil espafiola, Martfn era joven y muy trabajador. Vie en Espafia una gran eportunidad.
Pens6 que los preductes de su estancia tendrfan un buen mercado allf. Per eso, se fue a
Espafia, primere a Madrid y luego a Barcelona.
Martfn tenfa tambi6n otro motive para viajar a Espafia. Querfa buscar a una hermana de su madre que vivfa en Sevilla. Solo tenfa una vieja direcci6n y el nombre del hospital en que su tfa trabajaba antes de la guerra. Lleg6 a la casa de la direcci6n, pero nadie cenocfa a esa sefiera.
Une de los vecinos le die la direcci6n del hospital. Fue allf, en ese mismo hospital, donde Martfn ceneci6 a Rosarie.
Rosarie ayud6 a Martfn a buscar a la hermana de su madre. Desde el principio a
Rosarie le gust6 mucho la manera de ser del argentine. Tambi6n comprendi6 muy bien su
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busqueda. jElla sabfa mucho de bCisquedas impesibles! Desgraciadamente, despu6s de varies dfas, descubrieron que la tfa de Martfn habfa muerte. Su familia vivfa ahera en el sur de Francia.
Martfn ya no tenfa motives para estar m6s tiempo en Sevilla. Empezaba a hacer los preparatives para regresar a la Argentina. Y pasaba mucho tiempo-todo el tiempo que podfa-cen
Rosarie.
Martfn era muy serie y tambi6n estricto, pero tenfa un gran coraz6n. Rosarie le habl6 de sus cesas, de su pasado, de su hijo...y Martfn la escuch6 con atenci6n. Cemprendi6 que el ceraz6n de su amiga estaba lleno de dolor. Ella no pedfa elvidar...tedavfa. Pens6 que un gran cambio serfa una buena idea. Martfn le habl6 mucho de su pafs y de su familia. Trat6 de cenvencerta. "Estey seguro de que ped6s rehacer tu vida en la Argentina" le repetfa varias veces.
"Te vas a sentir come en casa."
Per fin Martin tuve que velver. Rosarie pens6 mucho en las cesas que Martfn le habla dicho. Per fin decidi6 irse a la Argentina, con su hije. Le escribi6 una large carta a Martfn y se embarc6. Cuando Ileg6 a Buenos Aires, Rosarie no pudo contener las Idgrimas cuando vie a
Martfn. Per primera vez en mucho tiempo lloraba de alegrla. tenfa-had muy trabajader-hardwerking tendrfan-would have vecinos-neighbers
Desde el principio-Frem the beginning busqueda-search pasade-past estaba lleno de dolor-was filled with pain cambie-change Trat6 de-He tried to seguro-sure rehacer-remake, make ever le habfa diche-had told her no pudo contener las l^grimas-ceuldn't held back her tears lloraba de alegrfa-she was crying for joy
Choose the correct response to complete the following sentences based on what you have just read.
1. Martfn Iglesias fue a Espafia perque .
A. buscaba a una esposa joven y muy trabajadera
B. crey6 que los preductes de estancia tendrfan un buen mercado
C. querfa hacer una vacaci6n
D. buscaba a Rosarie
2. Martfn le conocl6 a Rosarie en .
A. un hospital de Espafia C. la casa de una hermana de su madre
B. un hospital de la Argentina D. la casa de une de sus vecinos
3. Martin tenfa un ceraz6n, pero tambi6n era un hombre .
A. cruel C. serie
B. espafiol D. grande
El trat6 de convencerte a Rosarie a
A. ir a la Argentina C. vivir con 61 y su familia
B. casarse con 61 D. vivir en Espafia
Rosarie fue con a la Argentina.
A. Martfn C. su hermana
B. su hije D. su hija
Cuando le vie a Martfn en Buenos Aires, Rosarie
A. Iler6 de dolor C. escribi6 una carta a su hija
B. Iler6 de alegrfa D. tuve I6grimas de tristeza
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APPENDIX E: POST-TEST SURVEY
Name
Post-Test Survey Questions:
1. The time I spent in the language lab this semester helped me to improve my listening comprehension skills in Spanish.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
2. The time I spent In the language lab this semester helped me to improve my reading comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree not disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
3. I prefer to learn a language by visual (watching videos) methods.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
4. I prefer to learn a language by auditory (listening to tapes) methods.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
5. I prefer to learn a language by kinesthetic (touch and body movement) methods.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
6. My favorite language lab activity this semester was watching videos.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
7. My favorite language lab activity this semester was listening to cassette tapes.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
8. Watching videos helped me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
9. Watching videos helped me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
10. Listening to cassette tapes helped me to strengthen my listening comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
11. Listening to cassette tapes helped me to strengthen my reading comprehension skills.
Strongly Agree Agree Neither agree nor disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
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APPENDIX F: POST-TEST DEMOGRAPHIC QUESTIONNAIRE
Name
Affective Survey of the Language Laboratory at Texas Tech University
Post-Test
The purpose of this form is to study student attitudes toward the activities and requirements of the Language Learning Laboratory. Your instructors, other than your lab instructor, will not see these surveys.
Demographic Information:
Sex: M F
Age: (Circle one) 18-24 25-35 36-50 51 +
Are you taking Spanish: (Check one)
( ) To fulfill a degree requirement.
( ) For personal Interest.
( ) other, please specify.
1. Have you studied a foreign language previously?
If yes, please indicate: (If no, go to number 2.)
A. What language?
B. Where did you study this language?
C. How long did you study it?
D. Were you required to spend time in a language laboratory?
If you answered yes to letter D, please answer the following questions. (If you answered no, skip to number 2.)
1). What types of activities were required of you in the language laboratory? listening to tapes watching videos working computer exercises workbook exercises other (please specify):
My reading comprehension skills improved as a result of going to the language lab.
Strongly Agree Agree Mildly Agree Mildly Disagree Disagree Strongly
Disagree
My listening comprehension skills improved as a result of going to the language lab.
Strongly Agree Agree Mildly Agree Mildly Disagree Disagree Strongly
Disagree
2. Were you aware when you signed up for this course that you would be required to go to the language learning laboratory this semester?
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Please indicate level of knowledge of languages other than English in the areas of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.
1 =natlve 2= near native 3=good 4=fair 5=poor
Speaking Listening Reading Writing
Language 1
Language 2
Language 3
Language 4
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APPENDIX G: GLOSSARY
1. Alpha level- According to the Publication Manual of the American
Psychological Association (1996), an alpha level is a planned probability chosen as an "acceptable level of falsely rejecting a given null hypothesis...the probability of a Type 1 error in hypothesis testing" (p. 17).
2. Degrees of freedom (df)- developed to calibrate statistical findings for deviations in such variables as sample size and the number of groups in an experiment (Brown, 1988), the degrees of freedom are calculated as the number of subjects minus one. Thus, for the Destines experiment, the df are 55 (unless otherwise indicated) because 56 students participated in the study. The df are the "number of quantities that can vary if others are given" (Hatch and Farhady, 1982, p. 162).
3. Direct Method- based on the premise that "language is learned through the direct association of words and phrases with objects and actions, without the use of the native language as the intervening variable"
(O'Maggio-Hadley, 1993, p. 92). Thus, a direct method emphasizes total immersion into the target language.
4. Probability (p)- calculated by dividing the number of expected outcomes by the number of possible outcomes (Brown, 1988) to discover the likelihood of achieving the same results each time a particular experiment is performed.
5. Non-directional t-tests- also called two-tailed. Non-directional t-tests were employed for the Destinos experiment because they provide two rejection regions (Keppel, 1991). Researchers implement two-tailed t-tests when the null hypothesis predicts a relationship between a study's variables in two directions (Brown, 1988).
6. Type I error- rejection of the null hypothesis when the null hypothesis is true
(Keppel, 1991).
7. Z test- used for larger samples than a t-test; "the sampling distribution of differences between means" (Brown, 1991, p. 163).
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