The Effectiveness of Teaching Reduced Forms of Listening Comprehension

Abstract

This classroom research investigates the effectiveness of teaching reduced forms (e.g., "gonna" for "going to") for improving listen ing comprehension among EFL students in the People's Republic of China. A randomly selected experimental group (n = 16) received thirty lessons of approximately ten minutes each on reduced forms. This was part of their regular course work. At the same time a con trol group (n = 16) received "placebo" lessons of ten minutes on minimal pairs in pronunciation. Three measures of listening com prehension were used to pretest and posttest the students. The results indicate that teaching reduced forms does aid listening comprehen sion, but this is reflected to varying degrees in the three measures. The discussion explores causes for these differences, as well as solu tions to some of the problems encountered in small classroom research.