Listening and reading

1. Listening and reading Timothy shanahan University of Illinois at Chicago www.shanahanonliteracy.com

2. Listening comprehension • The ability to understand spoken information by ear • Listening comprehension is essential to communication (Galikjani & Ahmadi, 2011) estimate that 40-50% of communication time is devoted to listening, compared to 11-16% of that time spent on reading • Listening comprehension is essential to college learning, too--52% of learning time is focused on listening, compared to 17% on reading • In other words, listening is important

3. What is the relationship of listening comprehension and reading? • Despite the obvious importance of listening, there is a lot of interest in the impact of listening on reading comprehension • Do the best listeners read the best? • Does teaching listening improve reading comprehension?

4. Relationship between listening and reading • Studies show a clear relationship between listening and reading comprehension • For example, listening comprehension was found to explain unique variation in reading achievement at grades 1, 3, 5, & 7 (Berninger & Abbott, 2010) • Listening comprehension has been found to explain variance in reading comprehension beyond what is explained by decoding (Garcia & Cain, 2014) • Correlations between listening and reading comprehension are significant with young children (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008) and with adults, too (Sticht, 1972) • The problem with correlations just mean that better listeners are better readers, but they don’t reveal the reasons for that—relations could be causal, but not necessarily so

5. Simple view of reading Decoding Reading Comprehension Reading Comprehension Listening Comprehension

6. Where is listening comprehension? Doesn’t that help? • There is little evidence showing that teaching listening comprehension improves reading • Only one randomized trial in which training in oral language had a clear positive impact on reading comprehension—and this study did not emphasize listening comprehension separate from other language components (Clarke, et al., 2010)

7. What raises reading achievement? • The National Reading Panel conducted a review of the scientific research for the U.S. Congress to identify what kinds of instruction improves reading achievement • That panel concluded that it is important to provide students with explicit instruction in the following things: Phonemic awareness Phonics Oral reading fluency Vocabulary Reading comprehension

8. Indirect evidence of the impact of listening comprehension • Studies of reading to young children show clear impacts of such reading experiences on children’s vocabulary growth (NELP, 2008) • There are studies showing that experimental efforts to improve vocabulary improve reading achievement (NRP, 2000), so it is possible that listening experiences that expand vocabulary would have a positive impact on reading • Similarly, research is clear that a basic aspect of reading comprehension is using prior knowledge to interpret text meaning • It is clear that students can gain knowledge of science, social studies, and the arts from listening and this knowledge could then impact reading

9. Listening comprehension as analogy • It is difficult for teachers to explain the mental processes of reading comprehension • To facilitate instruction, teachers often depend upon listening comprehension as an analogy for what it is that students need to do when reading • Various instructional approaches start with listening comprehension (focusing on vocabulary, structure, or other thinking strategies or “text” features

10. Conclusions • Listening plays critical role in communication in learning • Reading and listening ability are related • Listening contributes to reading achievement by being a source of world knowledge and vocabulary that describes that knowledge and by being a helpful analogy • The impact of listening on reading increases as students progress up the grades