The present study made an attempt to explore the relationship that might exist between verbal repeatability (i.e., rehearsal speed as measured by digit memory span) and EFL learners' listening comprehension ability. Passage sentences or sense-group segments were presented to participants for aural comprehension under three different presentation conditions: (1) [-Speed / Pause], (2) [+Speed / -Pause], and (3) [+Speed / +Pause]. In the first condition, passage sentences were delivered at slow speech rates without any significant pauses between sentences, in the second condition, the same passage sentences were presented at normal speech rates without any significant pauses between sentences, and in the third, at normal speech rates with 2-second pauses between sentences. The results showed that listening comprehension performance of learners with high repeatability was significantly better than that of learners with low repeatability. A significant effect was also observed for presentation conditions. Significantly higher comprehension scores were obtained in the third condition than in the first. It is a reasonable conclusion that EFL learners show superior aural comprehension performance in the [+Speed (i.e., speech presented at normal speech rates) / +Pause (i.e., speech presented with slightly longer pauses between sense-group segments] presentation condition.
