The present research study aspires to discover the extent to which the provision of content related information assists language learners with their performance on post-lecture detailed listening comprehension questions. Twenty male and female adult university students at the upper intermediate level were randomly assigned into a control and experimental group. The participants in the experimental group performed pre-listening tasks through which they received general prior information about the content of the lectures. They then listened and answered some multiple-choice comprehension questions that asked for the specific information in the lectures. The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the experimental group did not perform significantly better than the control group. The findings indicated some of the limitations of compensating models and cast doubt on the assumption that contextual likelihood necessarily assists the processing of lower linguistic levels. Implications for language classes are suggested.
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