Extensive listening (EL) is a relatively new teaching approach compared to extensive reading (ER). In this study, EL refers to learners listening to a massive amount of aural input through various sources, such as television programs, movies, online materials, or audio books. EL has recently gained much attention from researchers and language practitioners due to the advancement of technology and accessibility of the internet, but the majority of studies were limited to investigating learners’ attitudes and perceptions or materials. There have been very few studies that quantify the extent to which L2 learners gain from EL. One area that has been the guideline of EL is that learners should be fully allowed to select their own materials for practice; however, in many EL studies it is the teachers who determine what students should study. Up to the present, there has been no research into whether self-selected or teacher-selected materials make any difference on L2 learners’ language gains. Based on the above background, the purpose of the study therefore is to explore what kinds of materials are perceived to be more helpful for beginning EL learners’ listening comprehension and aural vocabulary development. Seventy-three university sophomores took part in the study. They were randomly divided into A, B, and C groups: Group A did extensive listening with self-selected online materials; Group B listened to 13 audio graded readers plus doing extended listening fluency questions; Group C did not do any listening practice and served as the control group. A 100-item simulated TOEIC and 150-item Listening Vocabulary Levels Test (LVLT) were administered to the participants before and after the treatment. The treatment lasted 16 weeks. In the TOEIC test, Group A increased accuracy of 6.72, Group B 12.04, and Group C 2.52 items whereas it was 4.72, 7.16, and 2.26 words for Groups A, B, and C on the LVLT. GLM repeated measures showed that there was a significant interaction effect between Times (pre-test and post-test) and Group (A, B, C); both Groups A and B outperformed Group C on the TOEIC score and LVLT score. Effect sizes for the improvement between groups and within group were calculated. Large effect sizes for the improvement of Group B were shown in the two tests; for Group A, a large effect size was found on the TOEIC test, but a medium effect size in the LVLT test. The improvements of Group C were marginal. Written reflections by students in Groups A and B indicated that the two different types of English learning (EL) influenced how they practiced, which in turn affected their language gains. Pedagogical implications and suggestions were discussed and offered.

Dr. Anna C-S Chang obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Applied English at Hsing Wu University, New Taipei, Taiwan, China, teaching courses on English listening, reading and vocabulary. Her main research interests focus on the development of listening and reading fluency, and vocabulary learning. She has published many articles with internationally refereed journals such as RELC, System, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Journal of Reading in a Foreign Language, etc. She also won four best paper awards from English Teaching Association in Taiwan Province.