and task type. The participants needed to think aloud when they were tackling
the listening task of version 1.
b. Version 2: a research version which covered all the three phases listed in
Fig.6.1. That is to say, the participants were required to think aloud while
tackling the task and afterward listen to the mini-lecture again and retell the
lecture content during intervals. The researcher paused from time to time to
elicit the participants’retelling. Finally, a short follow-up interview was con-
ducted for additional information that might facilitate the analysis of TAP data.
6.2.4.1 Readability of the Scripts of the Two Tasks (2010 and 2013)
in the Research Version
The following table shows the readability indices and text statistics of the two
scripts. They demonstrate the overall difficulty level of the two mini-lectures at the
level of textual features. The readability indicators used here are Flesch-Kincaid
Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level and the text statistics that cover
comprehensive aspects of textual features include number of words and sentences,
length of words and sentences, percentage of complex words, calculated by The
Readability Test Tool online (http://www.read-able.com/).
According to readability level and text statistics of the two scripts (Table6.5), the
length of the two mini-lectures is approximately the same. Though Script 1 of year
2010 contains more complex words, its readability level is 1 grade lower than Script
2 of year 2013 whose average words per sentence is higher which might indicate a
higher syntactic difficulty level. Very similar average syllables per word ratio shows
the same level of lexical difficulty across two scripts. In addition, based on another
readability test, i.e., Readability Analyzer 1.0: A text difficulty analyzing tool (Xu
and Jia 2009), the type-token ratio across the two scripts is also very similar, 0.3645
for Script 1 and 0.3540 for Script 2, which indicates a quite similar level of word
variety, or in another word, the two scripts have very similar lexical diversity. On the
whole, the two mini-lectures have adjacent readability level with textual statistics
alike. The only difference between the two mini-lectures based on the content
analysis (Table6.6) that can lead to further discussion lies in the speaker’s standing
point. In the 2010 mini-lecture, the lecturer’s aim is merely introducing paralin-
guistic features while in the 2013 mini-lecture, the lecturer is not only introducing a
concept but also promoting it and the lecture itself can be considered value-laden.
Task targets: gap types
TEM 8 Mini-lecture and Gap-filling task is composed of four types of gaps:
- gaps that target key points of the mini-lecture;
- gaps that target supporting details;
6.2 Participants in the Qualitative Part of the Research 73