The Coverage Necessary For English Comprehension

By Author: Alyry Yesong
Total Articles: 10
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There have been four studies which have measured the coverage necessary for comprehension. Laufer (1989) found that 90% coverage led to unsatisfactory comprehension more often than satisfactory comprehension and that 95% coverage could ensure reasonable comprehension of a general academic L2 text. Hu and Nation (2000) investigated L2 learners' comprehension of a relatively easy fiction text with differing amounts of text coverage. They found that a small number of Cartier Jewelry learners gained adequate comprehension at 90% coverage, more learners gained adequate comprehension at 95% coverage, but they were still a minority, and at 100% coverage, most learners were able to understand the text.

Hu and Nation used a regression analysis to show that 98% coverage was needed for adequate comprehension without use of a dictionary or glossary. They also suggest that learners may need greater coverage of texts from different genres such as newspapers and academic texts. Hu and Nation's study is supported by research by Carver (1994) who found that 98 to 99% coverage ...
... provided adequate LI comprehension of a text with coverage being dependent on the difficulty of the text. However, the results of Bonk's (2000) study examining the effects of coverage on listening comprehension indicated that lower coverage may provide adequate listening comprehension. He investigated comprehension of four short passages of increasing lexical difficulty and measured comprehension with a written recall test and a dictation test.

Comprehension of movies may be easier than comprehension of written or aural text because the aural input in movies is supported by visual input. Chappie and Curtis (2000) and Rubin (1994) report that video may provide ample visual input which may assist with comprehension. However, Rubin notes that the correlation between the visual and the aural input may vary from scene to scene and program to program. Mueller (1980) found that visual input in the form of drawings facilitated listening comprehension for D&G Jewelry lower level learners but had no effect for advanced learners. Hanley et al. (1995) found that learners demonstrated higher comprehension on a test when they learned with video than when they learned with pictures. They suggest that video may improve comprehension because it may effectively link L2 form with LI meaning.

Taken together, the research on comprehension and coverage indicates that coverage ranging from 90% to 99% is likely to provide adequate comprehension of movies. In the present study, 95% and 98% were chosen to represent the possible lower and upper boundaries which may indicate adequate comprehension of movies. These coverage points were selected because Laufer (1989) suggests that 95% coverage may signify reasonable comprehension of written text, and Nation (2006) suggests that 98% coverage may signify ideal comprehension of written text.