There has been a growing interest in and concern for the teaching of listening in the last 40 years. Looking back over the years, we can see how the emphases on teaching listening and the focus of listening instruction have changed. Although instructional practices were initially heavily influenced by models of the written language and a…

Designed to assess listening ability and to indicate implications for listening instruction, this instrument comes in a full and an abbreviated form. The 45 multiple choice items on the full form measure 53 specific listening skills in five categories: (1) simple recall, (2) recognizing and following spoken directions, (3) recognizing a speaker's…

Designed to assess listeners' comprehension of ambiguous and polysemous utterances, this instrument is a series of 24 statements that include varying degrees and types of ambiguity. Subjects listen to prerecorded audio tapes of these statements, presented in a neutral tone that provides no stress or pitch cues to aid "disambiguation."…

Discusses the importance of and the difficulties in teaching listening skills. Describes different types of listening exercises. (EKN)

Comprehension tests are often used interchangeably, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are all measuring the same thing. We examine the validity of this assumption by comparing some of the most popular reading comprehension measures used in research and clinical practice in the United States: the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT), the two…

In a fifty-minute period, a class of speech students can be given an object lesson in listening skills. Materials needed are an article that can be read aloud in ten minutes, enough copies for class distribution, and a carefully composed list of ten to twelve questions. When the students arrive for the first class, the teacher reads the article…

The article compares normal language comprehension with that in aphasic patients in terms of both sentence and discourse comprehension. Implications for treatment of aphasic patients include emphasizing comprehension of main ideas, rather than details, and using materials with high imagery and personal relevance. (DB)

A variety of informal language development assessment tools is presented for use with children with developmental disabilities. This book is written as a manual for clinicians and researchers for evaluating children who cannot meet the cognitive, perceptual, or motor requirements of standardized tests and to help evaluate aspects of language not…

This guide, intended to assist school districts as they implement classroom activities and assessment procedures related to student learning objectives (for all grades) in the language arts areas of speaking and listening, reflects what students should know and be able to do in language arts as a consequence of their schooling. The guide is in…

Although listening has been shown to be the most frequent communication activity, and students desperately need listening training, the educational system usually ignores listening. After citing 10 bad listening habits which interfere with good aural communication and describing the characteristics of effective listeners, this paper offers 12…

Two implications for instruction in language arts are suggested. First, more reading of children's literature in the reading/language arts curriculum will foster learning the way language is written. Second, teaching story discourse rules directly is inappropriate, since children will tacitly construct the rules much as they have developed other…

The article examines children's requests for clarification (RQCLs) in sections on the development of RQCL behaviors in normally developing children, the use of RQCL behaviors by language-impaired children, evaluation of language-impaired children's use of RQCL behaviors, and facilitation of language impaired children's use of and response to…

Discusses origins of desire for authenticity in language teaching, analyzes the term, and describes some materials designed to fit in with a more rigorous view of what constitutes authenticity. Purpose is to create learning activities that demand an authentic response from foreign language students. (Author/BK)

Gives suggestions for surmounting the technical and linguistic problems associated with radio use in the classroom with "less-able" students. The documentary or travelogue combines the audio with visual reinforcement. Survival situations encourage listening. The modular/thematic/functional approach is also described. (PJM)

Teaching strategies are outlined for teachers of English as a second language to use in improving students' listening and reading comprehension skills specifically for two standardized tests: the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The strategies presented are not intended…