Effects of Annotations on Inferring Meaning within a Listening Comprehension Environment

Abstract

In this chapter, the author analyzes students' abilities to understand aural texts while accessing annotated information in a multimedia-based environment. In particular, the study examines inferencing in the aural environment and students' abilities to infer meaning from an aural text when processing it in one of four treatments: the aural passage 1) with no annotations; 2) with pictorial annotations only; 3) with written annotations only or; 4) with written and pictorial annotations. Overall, students who accessed pictorial and/or written annotations most often inferred meaning significantly better compared to those who did not access such annotations. And too, while the relationship of recall and inferencing was highly correlated based on annotation type, the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and inferencing based on annotation type was not strong.