Differences between L2 listening and reading

With technology being an increasingly important presence in modern life, children, adolescents and L2 learners are exposed to more and more digital materials, such as audio books, interactive posters with sound files and videos, and TED talks, in classrooms and daily life. These digital audio-visual materials are increasingly becoming a major source of information and learning (Khabbazbashi, Chan, & Clark, 2022). Herring (2019) argues that education is now operating within a communication paradigm that is “fundamentally multimodal”. The affordances of new digital platforms (e.g., Google classroom, Zoom, Microsoft Teams) mean that L2 learners can now more easily collaborate with their peers to complete group work at home. Such a shift means that L2 listening comprehension is playing a more prominent role in social and educational contexts. Nevertheless, it has not received as much attention as reading comprehension has in second language acquisition, assessment, and pedagogical research, especially in relation to the processes involved in L2 listening (Field, 2008, 2013). Furthermore, listening comprehension is often conflated with reading comprehension and operationalized in a similar way in pedagogical and assessment practice (van Zeeland & Schmitt, 2013). To contribute to the discussion of how the processes of L2 reading and listening comprehension differ, this chapter provides an overview of cognitive models of L2 reading and listening, and discusses how input modality may affect the process of comprehension, followed by a discussion of the differences between L2 reading and listening. Based on the account of the nature of L2 reading and listening, the chapter will discuss the implications for task design by contrasting some key characteristics in reading and listening texts and their impact on comprehension.