Aural comprehension deserves more emphasis. Various test types are critically discussed. Suggestions are given for producing and applying one's own tests. An account is given of two examples in the author's experience. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

This paper is part of an ongoing attempt to establish listening competencies for secondary school graduates. The paper relates the specific competencies to the International Literacy Association's definition of listening (the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken language and/or nonverbals) and the established…

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

An exploration of variables potentially related to Listening Fidelity (LF) was conducted through two separate studies. Study 1 indicated that when the potential fidelity of the stimulus message was varied as a function of the number of words and time length, the message with lowest potential fidelity produced significantly lower LF than either the…

Age-normed tests of listening comprehension, oral expression, reading comprehension, and written expression were administered in Grades 1 (n = 128), 3, and 5, or 3 (n = 113), 5, and 7. Confirmatory factor analyses compared 1- and 4-factor models at each grade level and supported a 4-factor model of language by ear, mouth, eye, and hand. Multiple…

A pivotal period in the development of language occurs in the second year of life, when language comprehension undergoes rapid acceleration. However, the brain bases of these advances remain speculative as there is currently no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from healthy, typically developing toddlers at this age. We…

Background: Down syndrome (DS) is characterized by impaired memory span, particularly auditory verbal memory span. Memory span is linked developmentally to several language capabilities, and may be a basic capacity that enables language learning. If children with DS had better memory span, they might benefit more from language intervention. The…

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the effects of listening to expository text on first graders' listening comprehension and book choice. The participants for this study included 77 first grade students from four heterogeneous classes at a suburban elementary school in the New York City metropolitan area. During the pretest and…

A French listening comprehension test administered to all grade 8 students taking core French in Ottawa schools is described. The test consists of 55 multiple choice questions which are heard along with preliminary descriptive material on a cassette recording. Part one requires students to hear a sentence and then decide which of four drawings…

Concludes that cloze tests as measure of comprehension includes a large component of variance specific to cloze technique and ability to comprehend speeded speech involves ability to be field independent. (MM)

Based on a paper delivered at the Canadian Linguistics Association Congress held in Toronto, Canada, June 10-13, 1969. (DS)

A reliability coefficient of 0.91 was obtained between pre- and posttest administrations. Internal stability was highest for total score, the subtests measuring form tests and function words, and grammatical categories. Low coefficients were obtained for the subtests of morphological construction and syntactic structure. (Author/DLS)

We investigated the coupling between a speaker's and a listener's eye movements. Some participants talked extemporaneously about a television show whose cast members they were viewing on a screen in front of them. Later, other participants listened to these monologues while viewing the same screen. Eye movements were recorded for all speakers and…

The TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) test is an English-language proficiency test for people whose native language is not English. It measures the everyday English skills of people working in an international environment. The scores indicate how well people can communicate in English with others in business, commerce, and…

This paper examines the development of strategy use over 6 months in two lower-intermediate learners of L2 French in secondary schools in England. These learners were selected from a larger sample on the basis of their scores on a recall protocol completed after listening to short passages at two time points: one was consistently a high scorer;…