This paper begins with a brief examination of the relationship between reading and listening comprehension with emphasis placed on the similarities inherent in both the receptive skills. Goodman (1967) and Smith (1979) characterize reading as an interaction between printed information and the readers' knowledge. This characterization is true of listening comprehension because listeners make full use of the knowledge to understand the auditory information which is received.
Schema theory proposed and advanced by Rumelhart & Ortony (1977) and Rumelhart (1980) shed new light on the complex interplay of knowledge and input information in the receptive processes. Recent research in schemata-based experiments presents renewed rationales for using audio-vidual aids in foreign language teaching. Bransford & Johnson (1972), for example, provides strong evidence that the pictorial context can increase the amount of information remembered from prose.
A three-factor analysis of variance was designed to determine the effects of five types of pictorial contexts, two types of passage modalities (visual and auditory), and two levels of English proficiency (high and low) on measures of reading and listening comprehension. There were twenty treatment groups in the study. The following pictorial contexts were used in each of the two passage modality conditions: 1) no picture context; 2) a picture which depicts a scene from the beginning of the passage; 3) a picture which depicts a main portion of the passage; 4) a picture which depicts a scene from the end of the passage; and 5) a series of three pictures. A set of four different passages and comprehension tests adapted from Fowler's First Certificate English (1973) were printed for the reading groups and taped for the listening groups. Subjects were 160 students enrolled in English classes at Hiroshima University. Each of them was given CELT Form L—A, V—A, and S—A prior to the experiment in order to evaluate English proficiency. The subjects were randomly assigned to the treatments.
The analysis indicated that a main effect for all types of pictorial context was not significant, F (4, 140) = 1.043 P > .05. A significant main effect for type of modality, F (4, 140) = 67.889 P < .01 and for level of English proficiency, F (1, 140) = 14.029 P < .01 was obtained respectively. A significant interaction was found between the type of pictorial context and type of modality, F (4, 140) = 2.685 P < .05, but the other interactions failed to reach significant level. A comparison of means indicated that the more proficient in English the subjects were, the more successful they were in listening (to = 2.782 P < .01) and reading (to = 2.441 P < .05 ). A further comparison on listening and reading comprehension under the pictorial conditions showed that reading comprehension was easier for the subjects than listening comprehension in all the contexts except 1) no pictorial context.
These findings partially support Omaggio (1979) because they confirm that all pictures are not equally effective in enhancing reading comprehension. But they do not reveal the significant effect of a picture depicting the beginning of the passage. Nor do the results of the experiment support Mueller (1980) who claims that visual aids before listening facilitate listening comprehension recall.