The Effect of Speech Rate on Korean EFL Learners' Performance on the TEPS Listening Test

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the effect of speech rate on Korean EFL learners performance on TEPS (Test of English Proficiency developed by Seoul National University) listening test. Improving communicative competence is one of the important objectives in English education in Korea.Listening and speaking are the basic skills for communication andlistening as a receptive skill is said to be more important than speaking which is a productive skill. In this context, many researchers have emphasized speech rate as one of the key factors affecting listening comprehension. Among the factors affecting listening comprehension, this study focuses on speech rate and its effect on listening comprehension. In this study, a total of 30 Korean EFL advanced university students took four TEPS listening tests with different speech rate. The speech rate of each test is 140, 160, 180, 200 WPM (words per minute), respectively. According toPimsleur, Hancook, and Fiurey (1977), 140 WPM is moderately slow, 160 and 180 WPM are average and 200 WPM is moderately fast. The tests were edited using the software, GoldWave. The participants took one test per day and the results were compared and analyzed using one-way ANOVA. For the total score, there was a significant difference among the tests and the score of the slowest listening test was the lowest. This means that slow speech rate is not always helpful for learners, especially when they are at the advanced level. In addition, TEPS listening test has four different parts. Part 1 is finding an appropriate response to a spoken statement. Part 2 is finding an appropriate response to the three spoken statement. Part 3 is answering questions after listening to a short conversation and part 4 is answering questions after listening to a short lecture. The scores of each part also showed a significant difference among the tests except part 2. In part 1, the test with the fastest speech rate showed the highest score. It is because the difficulty of the part 1 of the fastest testwasslightly easier than the other tests. Part 2 showed no difference among the tests. The learners performed worst in the slowest test in part 3. This result was similarto the result of the total scores. Finally, in part 4, the test with 160 WPM had higher score than all the other tests. That is, in part 4, which is answeringquestions after listening to a lecture, the speech rate had a significant effect on the learners comprehension. This is because of the different test characteristics and speech rate between conversation and lecture. Overall, the result of the present study indicated that the speech rate had little effect on the learners performance on TEPS listening test with faster speech rate except for part 4 which is answering questions after listening to the lecture. However, the slow speech rate affectedlearners performance in part 3 and part 4. It means that slow speech rate would not always be helpful for advanced learners. Therefore, it would be recommended to consider the different types of test items when making TEPS listening test and practice books.