The advantages of listening to academic content in a second language may be outweighed by disadvantages: A cognitive load theory approach
Résumé
Background. It is frequently implicitly assumed that advantages in language acquisition
when learning content through a second language exceed the disadvantages of reduced
content acquisition.
Aims. Based on cognitive load theory, that assumption was tested experimentally. The
theory is concerned with techniques for reducing extraneous working memory load in
order to facilitate learning.
Materials. This study used a listening task.
Methods. French students of Law and Political Science listened to an audio document
about the European Court of Humans Rights under one of four experimental conditions:
in their native language (French) twice; in a second language (German) twice; first in
French, then in German; or first in German then in French. After the listening task, we
tested students’ understanding of both the German language and of the academic content.
Results. Our results indicated that listening to the content in French before listening to
it in a second language was beneficial for both content and language learning. In contrast,
listening to content in a second language not only depressed content acquisition as is to be
expected, but also depressed language acquisition. We discuss the relevance of cognitive
load theory to frame learning tasks aimed at teaching content through a second language.
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