本論文主旨在探討各種不同呈現字彙的方式，在幫助台灣大學生對於英文聽講的理解上，其效力有何不同。從文獻回顧上可以知道，字彙是影響聽力的一個主要因素。許多在英文聽力上遭遇到困難的人，通常在演講中遇到不熟悉的單字或片語的時候，就因而停下來，沒有再繼續聽下去。解決這個問題的一個可能途徑是事先提供相關的字彙給這些在聽講上有困難的人，以降低遭遇這類聽講障礙的可能。另外一個與英文聽力有關的問題是，單字在連續快速的演講中聽起來與單獨發音的時候不一樣。如果能在事先提供這些單字的發音，是不是能幫助聆聽者增進對這些單字的辨識，頗值的研究。此外，許多研究顯示，在語境脈絡中學習單字的效果會比單獨學習這些單字要好的多。依此則有一問：”如果呈現給聆聽者的單字是出現在語境中，則此對聆聽者理解講詞的幫助會不會比單獨呈現單字的方式要來的大？” 本論文基於上述幾項因素的考慮，乃對呈現字彙對於幫助聆聽者理解英文演講內容的效果以及何種方式呈現字彙最為有效的問題加以探究。
本研究為了檢視不同呈現字彙的方式對幫助聆聽者理解英文演說內容的效果，設計了一項實驗，採用四種呈現字彙的途徑。第一種途徑是給予聆聽者一份單字列表，上列舉各單字之拼法，音標，與中文意義。第二種途徑除了單字列表，再加上這些單字的發音。第三種途徑為單字列表外加句子列表，句子列表中的句子裡包含了所有單字列表裡的單字。第四種呈現單字的途徑是單字列表再加上句子列表裡所有句子的發音。這個實驗的受試者來自國立清華大學五個系裡共兩百零三位學生，以隨機抽樣的方式選出。他們都有選修大一英文。實驗的步驟則依據一個五乘五的拉丁方格來排定呈現字彙方式的順序，以及所使用的英文演說。使用拉丁方格來決定實驗步驟可平衡受試者之間的差異以及所使用英文演說難易程度對實驗結果的影響。

實驗的結果整體而言，顯示在聆聽者聆聽演說前給予字彙，對於他們理解演說的內容有所幫助。而加入語境脈絡的字彙線索比起單獨的字彙要有效果。不過以視覺的方式呈現字彙與以聽覺的方式呈現字彙對於英文演說內容理解的助益，效果是類似的，並沒有顯著的差別。但根據受試者主觀評估的問卷資料，受試者顯著認為聽覺方式的呈現字彙比起視覺方式要有效果，而他們也比較喜歡聽覺的方式。至於使用呈現字彙的聽力教學方式能不能有效的增進學習者的聽力，則需要較長時期的研究來檢驗。

在本論文的最後，研究者會提出此研究所蘊含的意義及教學上的啟示。也會針對教師，學生以及教科書編纂人員提出建議。而此研究所受的限制與未來可能的後續研究也會加以討論。

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of various approaches to presenting vocabulary in advance for university students to prepare them in a short time to listen to academic lectures. The review of research indicates that vocabulary is one of the major factors that influences listening comprehension. Ineffective listeners usually stop listening or fail to continue paying attention when they encounter an unknown word or phrase in a listening text. To help ineffective listeners to solve this problem, it seems plausible to give vocabulary or key words to the listeners in advance in order to reduce the possibility of this sudden interruption. Another problem of the listening comprehension is that words change in sounds when they occurred in rapid, connected speech. They do not sound the same as they do when learned in isolation. For this reason, it was interesting to know whether providing new words orally would be more helpful than giving them visually. Furthermore, many studies have shown that learning words in context is far more efficient than learning them in isolation. The question is then raised: “Will it be more beneficial to present new words in context than learning them in isolation for listeners to understand the text?” Considering these factors together, the study was conducted to find out the effect of introducing vocabulary as clues to listening and the most effective way of presenting it.
In this study, an experiment was conducted to examine the effect that various approaches of vocabulary presentation have on listening comprehension. The researcher examined four approaches to presenting vocabulary to the listeners before they listened to the texts. In the first approach subjects were given a word list containing the definitions, phonetic symbols, grammatical categories and translation. In the second approach subjects were given the word list and they listened to the pronunciation of these words. In the third approach subjects were given the word list plus a sentence list in which every sentence contained a word that was in the word list. As to the fourth approach, the subjects were given the word list and they listened to the pronunciations of the sentences that contained those words. The researcher randomly selected 203 students from five departments of a major Taiwan university. All of them were students who took the freshman English class. A 5X5 Latin squares design (LS-5) was used to set the order of treatments and texts in a systematic way so that the practice effect, the difficulty level of the texts and the proficiency level of the subjects were balanced.

Generally, the result showed that giving vocabulary clues in advance could help the listeners to have a better understanding of the texts. Moreover, context clues did have a better beneficial effect for listening than isolated ones. But visual and sound clues for vocabulary had no different effect on listening comprehension. However, according to the subjects’ reports, which were collected by follow-up questionnaires, the listeners thought that these treatments were helpful to them and they liked them. A long-term study should be conducted to determine whether in the long run these treatments might improve the listeners’ listening comprehension.

Finally, some pedagogical implications for instruction on listening comprehension and suggestions for teachers, learners, and textbook designers are provided. The limitations of the study are also discussed and further studies are suggested.

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