The purpose of this study was to measure the efficiency of a teaching method developed to help Japanese students improve their ability to listen to authentic short English utterances. This teaching method, which is for teacher-led classroom instruction, was developed by incorporating the learning theories of: classical conditioning, operant conditioning and cognitive psychology. 183 college level learners of English took the same pre-test and, at the end of the 6-hour instruction period, two different types of dictation post-test: dictation test A was comprised of utterances chat the students had been taught and dictation test B was comprised of entirely new utterances. Score gains were 53% and 15% for tests A and B respectively. The ratio of 15:53(28%) shows the amount of learning transfer to the ability to listen to new utterances. The subjects were also requested to take a pre- and post-auditory comprehension test (on related topic) with an average recorded gain of 22%. To examine the meaning of this 22% improvement, a control group of 13 learners who had studied a 10-hour course of spoken dialogue comprehension using a multi-media CAI system, took the same auditory comprehension test with an average recorded gain of 37%. The ratio of 22:37(59%) indicates that the teaching method under examination enhances the ability to comprehend spoken dialogues half as much as the multi-media CAI system, even though this is not the primary objective of the teaching method. In conclusion it can be seen that teaching methods that improve the students' ability to comprehend short utterances also enhance their ability to comprehend spoken dialogues.
