Multimedia Learning in a Second Language: A Cognitive Load Perspective

Summary What can be done to help college students who are not native speakers of English learn from computer‐based lessons that are presented in English? To help students access the meaning of spoken words in a slow‐paced 16‐minute narration about wildlife in Antarctica, a representational video was...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied Cognitive Psychology
Main Authors: Mayer, Richard E., Lee, Hyunjeong, Peebles, Alanna
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/acp.3050
https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1002%2Facp.3050
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.3050
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Summary:Summary What can be done to help college students who are not native speakers of English learn from computer‐based lessons that are presented in English? To help students access the meaning of spoken words in a slow‐paced 16‐minute narration about wildlife in Antarctica, a representational video was added that showed the scenes and animals being described in the narration (Experiment 1). Adding video resulted in improved performance of non‐native English speakers on a comprehension test (d = 0.63), perhaps because the video improved access to word meaning without creating extraneous cognitive load. To help students perceive the spoken words in a fast‐paced 9‐minute narrated video about chemical reactions, concurrent on‐screen captions were added (Experiment 2). Adding on‐screen captions did not improve performance by non‐native English speakers on comprehension tests, perhaps because learners did not have available capacity to take advantage of the captions. Implications for cognitive load theory are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.