The effect of language ability and varying the immediate recall protocol procedure on recall measures of listening comprehension in university students of intermediate Spanish

Problem. Due to the absence of a widely accepted testing instrument that is compatible with the current knowledge about L2 listening, many researchers have begun to use the immediate recall protocol procedure as a measure of listening comprehension. Until recently, researchers were utilizing the recall format that was accepted in reading research. Recommendations have been made and implemented to vary this format when it's used as a measure of L2 listening comprehension. Unfortunately, empirical results have been generalized regardless of the format employed in data collection. Researchers disagree concerning the most suitable format to be used as a measure of L2 listening comprehension.;Method. This study was designed to investigate the effect that varying the format of the immediate recall protocol procedure as well as the listener's language ability have on recall measures of listening comprehension. The first independent variable, procedure, consisted of four format variations, while the second independent variable, language ability, was categorized by three levels. The dependent variable was the subject's listening comprehension score as indicated by the immediate recall protocol score. The sample consisted of ten randomly selected intact class sections of third-quarter university students of Spanish. The recall scores were statistically analyzed by a two-way analysis of variance.;Results/Conclusions. Interaction between the variables of procedure and language ability was not significant at the p ;Post-hoc multiple comparisons test revealed a significant difference between Procedure 1 and Procedure 3. There is also an indication of a difference between Procedures 3 and 4. Results of the post-hoc comparisons test for language ability indicated a significant difference between high and medium language ability as well as a significant difference between high and low language ability.