A systematic review of reading-while-listening in foreign language learners
Creators: name: Moreau, Christine
name: Parks, Kaitlyn
name: Forss, Lydia
name: Brainin, Leah
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Cognition and Perception
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Comprehension
subject: Fluency
subject: Foreign language learners
subject: Proficiency
subject: Reading-while-listening
subject: Second language learners
subject: Systematic review

description: Protocol Working title: A systematic review of reading while listening: Does dual-modality input help foreign language learners with language acquisition? Formulate a question Review question: Does reading while listening improve language acquisition in foreign (or second) language learners? Population: foreign language learners Intervention: reading-while-listening (RWL) Comparison: reading only (RO), listening only (LO) Outcome: language acquisition (including reading/language comprehension, vocabulary gains, fluency) Condition or domain being studied: Language and reading comprehension and language fluency in foreign language learners (FLL). This is defined as someone who is learning a new language, whether it be there second + language. I will be looking at reading-while-listening and whether this improves language/reading comprehension and language fluency. This includes reading texts and reading subtitles/closed captioning in the second language while simultaneously listening to audio. Introduction Rationale: Reading-while-listening (RWL) is described as reading using dual modalities; visually reading a text while hearing it said aloud (Gerbier et al., 2018). Previous research has found that recall for text details is better for reading than listening (Lund, 1991). However, listening also has its advantages; it provides phonological, prosodic and distributional information of the language, which together lead to better and faster lexical acquisition (Christiansen &amp; Dale, 2001). Together, listening and reading provides simultaneous information that could enhance knowledge of spelling-sound correspondences. Further, Perfetti and Hart (2002) state that a lexical representation is easier to retrieve if it has fully specified orthographic and phonological representations. RWL provides simultaneous orthographic and phonological information, which could be especially useful when encountering ambiguous words, like homographic words—words with a single orthographic form and two phonological forms. Therefore, RWL might lead to better comprehension and more vocabulary gain for second language learners because there is more linguistic information presented. However, it is also possible that presentation of audiovisual input may increase cognitive load and instead be detrimental to language learning (Plass et al., 2010). Through this review, I will be investigating whether RWL provides a language learning advantage by looking at the various measures used to assess language and reading comprehension, fluency and vocabulary. Further, this review could provide information on the mechanisms behind successful RWL interventions. Objectives: 1) Determine if RWL is more effective than: i) RO when reading books or other text-based information. ii) LO when listening to audiobooks or watching foreign films. • In studies with typically developing monolingual readers, it has been found that RWL is less efficient than RO for good readers (Gerbier et al., 2018). This may be because good readers can produce the correct phonological representations of written text. Therefore, RWL may be more effective for those who do not have a good phonological representation of the L2 because it provides the phonological and orthographic information simultaneously. • Woodall (2010) has found that RWL provides an advantage for reading comprehension over reading only (RO). However, it seems that RWL does not provide an advantage over RO for vocabulary knowledge, except for when there is textual enhancement (i.e., underlining words; Vu &amp; Peters, 2020). Additionally, Chang (2011) found that RWL has an advantage over listening only (LO) for fluency and vocabulary measures. Further, reading captions or subtitles while listening to a film has been found to improve comprehension and vocabulary gain (Birulés-Muntaner &amp; Soto-Faraco, 2016). Captions –presented in the same language as the audio—provides a greater advantage for vocabulary learning than subtitles – text in the same language as the L1 (Peters et al., 2016). However, there are some inconsistencies in the literature. Rogowsky et al. (2016) found that there were no differences between RO, LO, and RWL in listening and reading comprehension. 2) Determine if L1 language structure has an influence on the efficiency of RWL. • It is possible that the L1 will have an effect on the L2. This will be used as a mediator to determine if language structure of L1 (alphabetic, logographic, syllabic) has an influence on L2 and whether RWL provides an advantage for when the two language structures differ in comparison to when they are the same (i.e., English and Spanish are alphabetic language structures and Chinese is a logographic language). Methods Inclusion criteria: • Participants are foreign/second language learners • The study must have reading-while-listening condition (i.e., there must be simultaneous text and speech) and control condition(s) of listening only and/or reading only • The study must have at least one behavioural measure assessing language learning (e.g., comprehension, fluency, vocabulary gain) • Publication dates: 1980-2020 • The study must report original empirical findings • The study must report M and SD and/or effect sizes and/or test statistic for group differences • There are no age specifics Exclusion criteria: • Studies that have participants with developmental disorders (including reading disability, ADHD, ASD) • Studies conducted before 1980 • Articles not written in English • Studies that only looked at subtitles in the L1 (there must be a condition where the text/captions/subtitles are in the L2, the same language as the audio) • Reviews, meta-analysis, books Search strategy: A librarian was consulted for conducting the search strategy. I will be using several databases; ProQuest ERIC and Dissertations and Theses, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. Search history for each database will be recorded. An example of the Boolean search in PsycINFO: reading-while-listening.mp or listening-while-reading.mp. (reading-while listening or listening-while-reading).mp AND (“foreign language” OR “second language”).tw limit to yr="1980 -Current")) exp english as second language/ or exp foreign language learning/ limit 1 to yr="1980 -Current" (subtitle* or caption*).tw. limit 3 to yr="1980 -Current" (comprehension or acquisition or fluen* or vocabulary or learn*).mp. 2 and 4 and 5 One other person will be searching for studies independently in order to minimize the risk of bias. This person has a Master’s in library sciences. Article selection: The articles will be uploaded onto Covidence. Any duplicate articles will be eliminated. Another reviewer and I will be independently reviewing and selecting the studies based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria. This reviewer has their MSc in Psychology and is pursuing their PhD in cognitive psychology. We will first go through the abstract and titles, then go through the full text. This process will be recorded in a PRISMA flow chart (Moher et al., 2009). This will include total number of articles found, screened and included. Any disagreements about inclusion of studies will be resolved by consulting the second person who conducted the search. Data extraction: I will be extracting the data using the Covidence Extraction 2.0 template (see variables below). First, I will screen titles and abstracts for the data, then the full text. The researcher who conducted the search alongside me will verify my data extraction in order to determine if there are any errors or data missing. Variables that will be coded: • Experiment (a paper might report more than one experiment) • Publication (in APA formatting) • Status (Journal article, Book chapter, dissertation) • Location of the study • Total sample • Number of participants in each group • Gender split (% of females) • Mean and SD of age of participants (years) • First language of the group • Second language (the one being studied) • Language measures used • Language orthographies (the reading system of the first and foreign language will be coded as either logographic, syllabic or alphabetic) These variables (excluding Experiment and Publication) will be used as moderators in the meta-analysis. Data analysis: If a meta-analysis is deemed appropriate, that is, if there are enough studies reporting the necessary data and using similar outcome measures, I will conduct a random effects analysis to test the differences on the outcome measures between the RWL, RO and LO groups. The effect sizes used will be based on the most common effect sizes used by this body of literature (likely Cohen’s d). Tau2, which represents the absolute value of the true effect sizes, will be calculated (Deeks et al., 2008). It is possible that a correction will need to be made to control for alpha if Tau2 does not equal 0. This decision will be data-driven and conducted after the value of Tau2 has been determined. To estimate the between-study variance, I will use the Paule and Mandel method as this method has been found to be less biased and more efficient than other methods (Veroniki et al., 2016). For confidence interval estimation, I will use the Q-profile method if Tau2 is large and the Biggerstaff and Jackson method if Tau2 is small. Publication bias will be investigated by calculating Egger’s regression and funnel plots. Any outliers will be kept in the analyses.