ELI Researcher Investigates Language Complexity in Video Lectures

Dr. Emad A. Alghamdi, a valued member of the ELI and King Abdulaziz University, joined with two Australia-based academics, Paul Gruba and Eduardo Vellosa, to publish a meticulously researched paper titled The Relative Contribution of Language Complexity to Second Language Video Lectures Difficulty Assessment. The paper is currently accessible online at the Modern Language Journal, the top professional journal in the field.

The research builds on decades worth of research on text difficulty assessment, and extends it to L2 video difficulty assessment, once was an unexplored area of research due to the complexity and multifaceted factors underpinning video understanding in L2. While the research focuses on L2 learners and what makes watching in L2 difficult for them, it is already evident that the knowledge generated by this trio of researchers could have implications in fields far beyond just ESL.

How best to select appropriate videos for language teaching and learning is the primary objective of video difficulty assessment research and the authors point to acoustic, phonological, lexical, psycholinguistic, syntactic, and discoursal complexity as the building blocks of more accurate assessment of video difficulty. It is a complex undertaking but indeed no less than that of attempting to discern all the nuances – vocal, gestural, pitch, visual imagery etc – of every recorded speech. But luckily, the researchers have set a long-term agenda to “develop automated videotext complexity measures” and this study has made an initial foray into gauging linguistic complexity “to understand how they contribute to overall videotext difficulty.”

Using 322 responses to a large sample of videos, the authors were able to point out what linguistic factors affecting a viewer’s language comprehension and synthesize a report on the linguistic qualities of a particular video.

The next step, it would seem, is getting a machine to do it.