Word Repetition in EFL Shadowing : The Roles of Phrasal Knowledge, Context, and Proficiency

Abstract

There is a theoretical belief that shadowing will help learners pay attention to the phonological features of the aural input rather than to its contextual information. A previous study focusing on this issue indicated that success in repeating words in EFL shadowing was not improved by the natural context but rather by learner familiarity with the phrase. Thus, this study, using an original shadowing task and a questionnaire, attempted to reveal the role of phrase familiarity in shadowing, while comparing it to those of contextual information and of learner's proficiency level (i.e., lower and upper). The results clearly showed that learner familiarity with phrases (especially their phonological aspects) greatly improved the word repetition rates, whereas contextual information played a less important role. Moreover, they also indicated that the lower proficiency group depended more on phrasal knowledge than the upper proficiency group. These results suggest that shadowing practice may develop learner ability in phonological chunk, holistic, processing, an ability that may be basic to the improvement of all language skills. Additionally, it is assumed that instructions raising learners' strategy awareness may help improve their monitoring ability.