The role of digital video media in second language listening ...

Recall that Videotext Three was considered to be the most difficult by the listeners.As expected, both Alison and Catherine paused first to read the headline but notethat they did not interrupt their efforts at the point the headline came on the screenbut rather at a point at which the first spoken sentence ends. The two make a secondpause at the end of the introductory section (Frame A20) which is the same point atwhich Brenda and Denise also made a pause. A dramatic shift in scene, in this casefrom the studio to the roadside view of the field, appears to be a common point ofsegmentation. From there, however, it appears that both the intermediate andadvanced listeners paused at points where they felt there was a drop in intonation orwhen they understood structural cues in the spoken Japanese which signal that asentence is likely to be ending. Once more, Denise displayed opportunisticbehaviour and paused whenever she discovered any element of the videotext thatcould contribute to her tentative understanding.Brenda displayed a somewhat different pattern of interactions with Videotext Threethen she had previously. This time, she made the relatively few stops. Her behaviourcan likely be attributed to fatigue she felt during the verbal report sessions.Throughout, she frequently mentioned being tired and frustrated with the exercise.Despite prompting at the end, Brenda provided few comments about Videotext Threeand stopped making any further effort to comprehend it soon after she completed aninitial viewing.As a general patten, the location of videotext segmentation occurs at the end ofspoken sentences. Drops in intonation or other structural cues in the aural narrativeappear to be more powerful determinants of pause rates than do the edit pointsfound in the visual narrative structure. The intermediate listeners, in particular,paused at points in accordance with the aural narrative. The advanced listener, lessreliant on the digital medium, paused infrequently at the completion of sentences.The beginning listener sought to take advantage of every element.113