Since this weblog mail service was written nosotros've written an updated weblog in 2019 on the research between listening and reading entitled: "Agreement the Listening–Reading Connection."


As humans, we have so many important ways we convey and empathise information as nosotros communicate.  We are born with ears, and are never really taught how to listen—it'southward understood how to do it, we just start. As kids, we abound upward learning how to speak by listening to the people who are close to united states and imitating others. Virtually everyone enjoys listening to radio , watching videos, talking on the phone. All of these activities assistance to develop these skills, just by doing them repetitively, but how often do we focus on these skills that nosotros have for granted? How often do we consciously call up that we are learning to read when we listen?

Other language skills such as reading and writing need to be explicitly taught. Researchers have found that the 4 language skill areas: listening, speaking, reading, and writing are all integrated and contribute to people'due south agreement of the world around them. Reading and listening are receptive skills; writing and speaking are productive skills. And co-ordinate to enquiry, there are substantial correlations among these four language processes. So when students are listening, they are as well advancing their other language skills.

While listening and reading share many comprehension processes, in that location are differences in the mode the information is processed. Readers oft call up more details and tin go back to the text. Listeners construct understanding as they heed and often come up away with an overall understanding of ideas (Absalom and Rizzi, 2008). Students who are successful at reading comprehension sympathise at the sentence level likewise as understanding the text as an integrated whole (Perfetti, 2007).

Comprehension = Decoding Skills + Language Skills

Reading comprehension involves both decoding print and understanding language. Once students can decode text, their comprehension is dependent on understanding language. (Catts, Hogan, and Adlof, 2005). Students who have non mastered decoding can withal learn language skills by listening to stories and content read aloud. Students can listen on a higher language level than they can read, so listening provides a manner to meliorate students' language skills , making complex ideas more attainable to students and exposing them to vocabulary and language patterns that are not part of their everyday speech (Fountas and Pinnell 1996). For case, students may be able to mind to and sympathize the plot and character development of Don Quixote and his inner journeying, just not be able to decode enough words on their ain to make sense of the content while reading.

Increasing Linguistic communication Skills by Listening

Language skills are essential in creating a mental representation of the whole text to understand it. Higher-level language skills tin be developed by listening to stories. This develops language skills in all students, even those who struggle with decoding. Therefore, listening can be used to develop these essential linguistic communication skills with students of all reading abilities. These linguistic communication skills can then influence and enhance their reading comprehension. For example, when teaching the comprehension skill of compare/contrast, students can heed to a story about the traditional view of Genghis Khan  equally a conqueror and compare that to an author'southward view of Genghis Khan as a visionary. Students tin learn to utilize high-level comprehension skills by listening to the content and working with the concepts.

Language Skills

    • Literal Knowledge: Students need to recall descriptions, facts and details to understand the significant. This includes understanding information that is explicitly stated.
    • Vocabulary: Students who understand content every bit a whole are able to construct a mental model of the story. This allows them to discover the meaning of unknown words past interpreting them inside the context of the story. They are more likely to cull the correct significant of words with multiple meanings, equally well as discover the pregnant of words by using the context. Also, when they hear idioms and figurative language they are able to empathize them within the whole context, rather than as private words.
    • Inferencing: Students who have high comprehension make inferences as they listen, connecting pieces of text together. They fill in missing information from their prior cognition and feel, and go across the literal significant of the content (Bowyer-Crane & Snowling, 2005).
    • Chief Idea: When listening, students generalize the content as a whole and identify the master ideas of the information presented. They interpret the information and how information technology all contributes to a main topic or issue.
    • Summarizing: When students are asked to summarize what they heard, they identify the importance of each detail and retell the cardinal points of information and explain how they contribute to the overall ideas.
    • Analyze Point of View: Students listen to place and evaluate the speaker'south purpose and main ideas.
    • Evaluating Reasoning: Students  evaluate the reasoning , credibility, and relevance of a speaker or author's ideas and information.

Using Listening to Ameliorate Reading Comprehension

After seeing the connections betwixt the four language skills, we see the importance in teaching and assessing listening and speaking skills in schools. By growing one skill, students are developing their other language skills. At that place is potent prove that college-level language skills are critical to skilful reading comprehension and its development. These higher-level skills play an important role in a reader'southward or listener's structure of the pregnant of a text. Each of these skills can exist taught and assessed in students of all reading levels, past using high-quality listening resources . Developing and practicing these skills while listening tin contribute to increased comprehension when reading. These skills can be taught through targeted educational activity, discussions, and monitoring progress to meet the needs of all students.

Observe more up-to-appointment content on our blog nearly the connection between reading and listening.

References

Catts, H. Westward., Hogan, T. P., & Adlof, S. M. (2005). Developmental changes in reading and reading disabilities. In H. Due west. Catts & A. One thousand. Kamhi (Eds.), The connections between linguistic communication and reading disabilities (pp. 25-40). Mahwah,NJ: Erlbaum.

Bowyer-Crane, C., & Snowling, J. (2005). Assessing children's inference generation: What do tests of reading comprehension mensurate? British Journal of Educational Psychology , 75, 189-201.

Hogan, T. P., Bridges, Thousand. S., Justice, L. M. , & Cain, Chiliad. (2011). Increasing college level language skills to amend reading comprehension. Focus on Exceptional Children , 44 (3), 1-19.

Perfetti, C. A. (2007). Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading , 11, 357-383.