Visual aids accompanying listening tasks are of special significance in second or foreign language teaching. This study examined the effects of text/picture accompaniments to audio recordings on language learners' performance. The main aim was to investigate the effect of texts and pictures, presented jointly, on audio-based listening scores and response time. A group of language learners took some listening comprehension tests, with or without text/picture aids, under three conditions of (1) text/picture-before listening to audio recordings, (2) text/picture-during listening to audio recordings and (3) text/picture-free listening. According to results from tests of within-subjects effects and pair-wise comparisons, listeners' scores varied significantly across the three test conditions (p = 0.002), with 82, 73 and 72 for the text/picture-before, text/picture-during and text/picture-free listening, respectively. As for the response time, the text/picture-before and text/picture-during conditions consumed significantly more time than the text/picture-free condition (M = 40.97 and 40.12 versus 23.61 sec). The response time was significantly affected by the presentation modes (texts, pictures or audio recording) used to convey audio information, especially in the text/picture-included conditions.
