The Effects of Audio and Video Modalities on Business English Majors'Listening Comprehension

This study reports the results of an experiment and investigates the effects of different input forms of English movies (audio and video) on listening comprehension.In this study,audios and videos without subtitles of movies can be seen as different modes.Furthermore,the degrees of higher level students'and lower level students'dependencies on audio and video were analyzed.The results showed:1) multimodality, i.e.videos without subtitles but with images and sound, promoted students'listening comprehension;A significant difference was found between such different input forms of English movies as audios and videos without subtitles in their effects on listening comprehension,which is related to the degree of sound-images mapping.2) Compared with the higher level students,lower level students had greater dependency on the images of videos.The article also discusses the implications in the application studies of multimodality theory.