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1 Developing the ability to understand speech in a foreign language is a difficult task for the secondlanguage (L2) learner. Central to this process is the ability to identify words in spoken language andunderstand their meanings, also known as decoding. Decoding is the fundamental process of breaking up thespeech stream into recognizable words making listening comprehension possible. It is a process in which thelistener identifies word boundaries, recognizes words, and establishes a literal meaning of a spoken
utterance (Field, 2008). Although decoding is an essential skill for listening comprehension, not enough L2
listening research attention has been focused on understanding its relationship to listening comprehension
and the listeners’ comprehension processes while decoding . The studies included in this dissertation
primarily investigate the decoding abilities of Japanese university EFL students and the relationships thatbottom-up skills, metacognitive awareness and aural vocabulary knowledge have with listening
comprehension. Bottom-up skills refer to the capacity to perceive linguistic in formation from the speech
signal. Metacognitive awareness refers to one’s knowledge of cognitive processes and listening strategies
while listening. Aural vocabulary knowledge refers to knowledge of acoustic representations for words. The
basic aim of these studies is to assess decoding ability, gain insight into its importance for listening
comprehension and try to understand the particular English decoding difficulties that are representative ofnative Japanese learners of English. With this information, this dissertation aims to also explore how
decoding skills might be effectively developed for these learners. This dissertation presents four researchstudies which aim to address the following three main research objectives:
1)

To investigate the decoding ability of Japanese EFL learners.

2)

To examine the relative importance that various factors associated wi th listening ability have on L2
listening.

3)

To identify common sources of decoding difficulties for Japanese EFL learners.

In this abstract, a brief summary of the findings in regard to each research objective will be provided
followed by the primary research questions and a summary of the study. The results for Objective 1 indicatethat decoding ability may be limited due to phonological modification which n ormally occurs in connectedspeech. Phonological modification refers to various changes in the pronunciation of phonemes that regularly
occur in connected speech. Decoding ability for function words was better when words were presented in
citation form than when presented in their normal weak forms. Function words are words which signify
grammatical information (e.g. articles, prepositions, and conjunctions) and typically require phonologicalmodification in connected speech resulting in a deemphasized and shortened form of the word, known asweak forms. In regard to Objective 2, findings from correlation and regression analysis show that decoding
ability has a stronger relationship with listening ability than with aural vocabulary knowledge. However,aural vocabulary knowledge for the first 1,000-word level demonstrated greater predictive capacity in2

listening comprehension scores than decoding ability. Finally, results for Objective 3 introduced quantitativeand qualitative assessments to identify sources o f decoding difficulty through a mixed-methods approach.
The analysis identified four trends in decoding errors for Japanese EFL learners: limited collocation
familiarity, syntactic knowledge constraints, difficulties utilizing co -text, and L1 phonological influence.

Three primary research questions guide the research conducted for this dissertation.
1) To what extent can Japanese university students decode funct ion words from connected speech?
(Research Study 1)2) What is the strength of association that L2 listening comprehension ability has with awareness ofmetacognitive skills, ability to decode function words, knowledge of aural vocabulary and decoding
ability? (Research Studies 2 and 3)
3) What sources of decoding difficulty can be identified throu gh tests of decoding ability and analysis of
introspective self-observation protocol responses? (Research Study 4)
In Research Study 1, which is entitled “Analyzing Difficulties in Aural Word Recognition for Japanese English
Learners: Identifying Function Words in Connected Speech” the difficulties that Japanese listeners’ have inrecognizing function words in connected speech is investigated. The results help to demonstrate the degreeof difficulty this task presents to listeners as well as some defining characteristics of the words which werethe most difficult to decode. A partial transcription test was administered to a cohort of first - andsecond-year Japanese university students (N = 29). In the 30-item test, each item aurally presented
sentences of five to six words which contained a function word. On the test paper, the first and last words ofthe sentence were written and students were instructed to transcribe the three to four missing words thatwere aurally presented. For example, the listeners he ard, “I need to talk to you.” and attempted totranscribe the four missing words in the test item “I _________ you.” However, as this study focuse d on
function words, only decoding ability for the two i nstances of the function word to were measured. The
same students took this same test once more with the exception that the aurally presented sentences werespoken in citation form, without weak form phonological modification. By comparing the results from bothtests (e.g. citation form and connected speech) inferences can be drawn about the degree of difficulty thatattributes of connected speech presented to the listeners. Results showed that only 77.8% of the words
presented with connected speech were transcribed whereas 96.3% of the words presented in cita tion form
were transcribed. These results suggest that attributes of connected speech, such as weak form function
words, were partially responsible for decoding difficulties. The findings also provide an indication of thedegree of difficulty learners have with decoding weak form function words in connected speech, highlighting
the importance of this research focus. Furthermore, these findings help in identifying particular3

characteristics of some function words, such as voiceless initial phonemes (e.g. /h/ as in “him”), that makethem particularly difficult for listeners to decode.

Research Study 2, which is entitled “Exploring the Relationship that Listening Performance has withBottom-Up Skills and Metacognitive Awareness” investigated the strength of re lationship between listening
comprehension and bottom-up skills in addition to the relationship between listening comprehension andmetacognitive awareness evident from a cohort of 54 first-year Japanese university students. The results
indicated that the bottom-up skill of decoding deemphasized function words in a partial dictation task (i.e.
cloze listening task) had the strongest correlation with listening test scores. In order to explore theserelationships, this study employed the Clear Listening Diagn ostic Test (Gilbert, 2012) to measure bottom-up
skills, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire (Vandergrift et al., 2006) to assess utilization
and awareness of listening strategies, and the Eiken Pre -2 grade listening section to measure listening
comprehension. The results demonstrated a significant and moderately strong correlation between listening
ability and one of the bottom-up skills tested, deemphasized function word transcription ( r = .50). In
comparison, the relationship between listening ability and metacognitive awareness was weak ( r s = .21),
suggesting further evidence for the importance of bottom -up processes for L2 listening comprehension
development. These results prompt the further investigation of bottom-up skills and their relationship tolistening comprehension ability.

Research Study 3, which is entitled “Exploring the Relationships between L2 Vocabulary Knowledge,
Decoding, and L2 Listening Comprehension” demonstrates the important roles of decoding in listening ability
and aimed to ascertain these relationships more rigorously through correlational and multiple regress ionanalysis. This study investigated the relationships between listening ability, using two measure s of listening
comprehension, aural vocabulary knowledge and decoding ability with 130 first-year Japanese university
students. Listening comprehension was assessed using listening sections from the E iken Pre-2 and TOEICtests. The Listening Vocabulary Levels Test (McLean et al. , 2015) was used to assess aural vocabularyknowledge and decoding ability was assessed through a paused transcription test. In this testing format, thetest-taker listens to an audio recording and at irregular points in the recording, which correspond to thetarget items selected for the test, a pause is inserted. During this brief pause, the test-taker tries totranscribe the last phrase of three to five words which immediately preceded the pause. The recording
resumes playback after the pause and the test-taker continues listening and transcribing the phrases heard
before each pause. Paused transcription testing is thought to provide a more accurate assessment of
decoding errors than dictation because the listener may more fully utilize top -down as well us bottom-up

4processing skills. The findings from Research Study 3 suggest that decoding words from connected speech
had a stronger relationship with the two measures of listening ability (r = .39 and .51) than aural vocabularyknowledge had (r = .15 and .12) as measured by the total scores of the Listening Vocabulary Levels Test.
However, scores from the first 1,000-word level of the Listening Vocabulary Test were the strongest
predictive variable, independently predicting 22% of variance in TOEIC listening scores and 21% of variancein Eiken Pre-2 listening scores. Regression analyses also indicated that in combination, aural knowledge ofvocabulary at the first 1,000-word level and decoding ability could predict 34% and 38% of total varianceobserved in TOEIC listening and Eiken Pre-2 listening scores, respectively. These findings provide evidence
that decoding ability and aural knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary is strongly associated with listening
ability and worthy of further investigation and analysis.

Research Study 4, which is entitled “Analyzing Trends in the Aural Decoding Errors of Japanese EFL Learners”
presents an in-depth analysis of identifiable trends in decoding errors using both quantitative andqualitative analysis. Decoding errors were elicited with the same paused tr anscription test utilized in
Research Study 3 along with an introspective self-observation protocol which could provide more detail in
investigating the sources of decoding errors for 63 first-year Japanese university students. Quantitative
findings showed that decoding ability was quite limited for this cohort with only 45.1% of the target words
correctly transcribed from connected speech. Supported by the quantitative data, the qualitative findings
indicated that four main trends in decoding difficulty co uld be identified from this study: limited collocation
familiarity, syntactic knowledge constraints, difficulties utilizing co -text, and L1 phonological influence.
Limited collocation familiarity refers to decoding difficulty due to inadequate knowledge of some of thecollocations tested. Familiar collocation were transcribed more accurately than those reported as unfamiliar.
The syntactic knowledge constraint trend refers to the participants’ misapplication of syntactic knowledge todecoding hypotheses. For instance, notions of correct and incorrect word order appeared to have limited
decoding accuracy in some cases. Difficulty utilizing co -text refers to decoding errors which were caused inpart from misunderstanding the previously heard text (i.e. co -text). Finally, L1 phonological influence refers
to the observed trend in decoding errors in which the attributes of the listeners’ native language led todecoding difficulties.

Several pedagogical implications are briefly presented here based on the studies conducted for thisdissertation. First, explicit instruction for decoding and collocation development should be encouraged.
Participants in these studies demonstrated low levels of decoding ability, as measured by a paused
transcription test, for moderately slow speech containing high-frequency vocabulary. The average speech

5rate for all test audio was 102 words per minute (ranging from 95 to 105 wpm) which is below the ‘slower
than normal’ speech rates for interviews (120 wpm) and comparable to that for l ectures (100 wpm) (Tauroza& Allison, 1990). An analysis of the 5,216 words used in the paused transcription test audio showed that 91%
of them were within the first 1000-word frequency band of the Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA) and the British National Corpus (BNC). Findings also showed that familiarity with commonly usedcollocation was often limited. Explicit instruction to improve knowledge of frequently used collocation is
likely to enhance decoding and thereby listening comprehension a bility. Second, the utilization of top-down
processing for meaning should be encouraged. Participants seemed to have relied heavily on perception of
the acoustic input for decoding. However, the acoustic input from connected speech is often not clearly
articulated due to factors associated with connected speech such as phonological modification. Therefore ,listeners need to also rely on sources of information other than the acoustic input, such as context, co-text
and syntax, in order to create meaning from the speech signal. Third, more exposure to authentic connectedspeech should be generally encouraged to help listeners familiarize themselves with the sounds andconventions of spoken English. Such a familiarity with authentic spoken English could help mi tigate many of
the challenges that listeners face when trying to comprehend normal connected speech. Fourth, the use of
testing to diagnose specific listening difficulties for listeners should be encouraged. Listening is a highly
individualized skill that might be developed more effectively through focusing on overcoming the specificlistening difficulties faced by individual learners. Diagnostic tests could be utilized to help identify theseweaknesses so that teachers may focus on helping learners improve in those areas. Fifth, more focus shouldbe placed on acquiring aural vocabulary knowledge of high -frequency words in connected speech. Theresults showed that high-frequency words are a critical aspect associated with listening comprehension
ability and should be prioritized before the acquisition of lower-frequency words. Finally, the use ofintelligible English pronunciation should be encouraged for students and teachers to foster accurate aural
vocabulary knowledge as well as decoding ability. Habitual use of heavily Japanese accented English distorts
the phonological representation of English words in the lexicons of the learners making listening as well as
intelligible pronunciation more difficult.

The studies comprising this dissertation have several limitations and remaining issues to consider. In Study 1,
the same participants were tested using both the connected speech version and citation form version of thepartial dictation test. This is a limitation in that testing effects could not be contro lled for. The results for thecitation form version of the paused transcription test may have been higher due to taking the test twice(however, the magnitude of the difference in decoding ability between the connected speech version andcitation form version (18.5%) of the same test is larger than would be expected from just hearing the test

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audio twice more). Although informative, Studies 2 and 3 were limited by the correlational nature of theresearch design. Future interventional studies would be helpfu l in establishing the contributions thathigh-frequency vocabulary knowledge and decoding ability make on improving listening comprehension.
Limitations in regard to Study 4 involve the difficulty of i dentifying the primary causes for decoding errors.
The ISOP interviews provided useful data but participants were often unable to specifically describe theirdifficulties in decoding the target phrase for the paused transcription test. In future studies, creating a
database of transcription errors for particular three-word phrases elicited from Japanese university studentsof similar English proficiency would be a useful resource to further analyze and establish these decoding
trends.

The results of these studies illustrate several issues in need of further investigation in regard to decoding.
Longitudinal intervention studies are needed to determine whether improving decoding ability and aural
vocabulary knowledge will actually result in improved listening comprehension ability. Pedagogical studies
are needed to identify which approaches are most effective for helping learners improve their decoding
skills. The prospect of CALL applications and mobile apps for developing decoding ability for high -frequency
words is also worthy of further investigation. The four trends outlined in Study 4 provided a preliminary
assessment of common error patters that could be observed when decoding three -word target phrases. In
order to build support for these trends more data should be collected and analyzed from learners of sim ilar
proficiency to verify and support these decoding error trends. A large corpus of the decoding errors madefor a specified three-word string of connected speech by L2 listeners of a common L1 population could be
useful in revealing common trends in their decoding errors. If the data collected were extensive enough andclassified by learner proficiency level, it could allow for predicting the likelihood that a listener would makea particular type of decoding error for a given three -word aural stimulus. Such data could allow researchers
to identify underlying factors (e.g. L1 phonological influence) which may be primarily responsible for theobserved error trends. Predictable trends in decoding errors could help teachers anticipate listeners’ errors
and provide more focused instruction to help students remedy them. Systematically addressing these trends
in decoding errors with a sustained pedagogical focus can most likely help English learners overcome theirunique obstacles to comprehending connected spee ch and foster continued listening skill development.

References Gilbert, J. (2012). Clear speech: Pronunciation and listening comprehension in North American English (4thed.). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

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McLean, S., Kramer, B., & Beglar, D. (2015). The creation and validation of a listening vocabulary levels test.
Language Teaching Research, 19(9), 741–760. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168814567889
Tauroza, S., & Allison, D. (1990). Speech rates in British English. Applied Linguistics, 11(1), 90–105.
https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/11.1.90
Vandergrift, L., Goh, C.C.M., Mareschal, C., & Tafaghodtari, M.H. (2006). The metacognitive awarenesslistening questionnaire (MALQ): Development and validation. Language Learning, 56, 431–462.

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