“Listen and Understand What I Am Saying”: Church-Listening As a Challenge for Non-Native Listeners of English in the United Kingdom

Journal article, 2015

This article uses computer-assisted analysis to study the listening environment provided by Bible readings and preaching during church services. It focuses on the vocabulary size needed to com- prehend 95% and 98% of the running words of the input (lexical coverage levels indicating comprehension in connection with listening) and on the place of infrequent vocabulary in liturgi- cal discourse. The finding that 4,000 words and 7,000 words, respectively, are needed to reach the target levels for lexical coverage suggests that non-native listeners with vocabularies of just a few thousand words may be seriously challenged by church listening.