The Role of Visuals on EFL Listening Comprehension

Hümeyra Genç investigates the impact that additional visual information has in multi-modal inputs on the academic listening comprehension of EFL (English as a foreign language) students. Her findings suggest that the inclusion of nonverbal information, whether context- or content-related, has a fundamentally positive effect on the EFL students’ listening performance, through all language proficiency levels and independendent of gender. These results entail significant practical and pedagogical implications for EFL teachers, ELT (English language teaching) publishers, and ELT test designers with respect to listening skill instructions, designing teaching materials, and developing listening tests.