The listening comprehension performance of 64 educable mentally retarded students (mean age 15) and a nonretarded younger sample was assessed when using the following types of advance organizers: knowledge statements; knowledge-plus-purpose statements; control (no information). Among all subjects, comprehension scores were significantly higher in…

The literature on oral narrative comprehension, memory, and production abilities of language-learning-disabled students is reviewed. The relationship of these abilities to academic success is noted. (Author/DB)

Examined the effect of lateral preference on passage comprehension and short-term memory function for 48 normal fourth-grade males. Lateralized readers recalled more information under auditory than written conditions; bilateral readers showed no preference. Between-group comparisons showed bilateral readers to comprehend significantly more than…

Describes a study which addressed three questions: (1) Do Hawaiian-English children have the same general ability to understand connected discourse as their standard English-speaking peers? (2) Do they have more difficulty understanding standard English than their own dialect? and (3) Can they more easily understand standard English by making…

Results indicate that (1) subjects listening to instructional material while alone comprehend significantly more than those listening as an audience member and (2) a significant relationship exists between the number of strangers present and listening comprehension. This study may have implications for mass lecture courses. (PD)

Describes a study that attempts to define what features of foreigner talk (FT) aid learner comprehension. Features investigated were: (1) a reduced rate of delivery, and (2) features of grammatical FT such as synonymy, hyperonomy, parallel syntactic structures, and paraphrase. Measures showed that the effect of reduced rates of delivery was…

Reviews the theories which assert the necessity for prolonged intensive listening without expectations of production for some time in language teaching. Asserts that comprehension and production are indissoluble partners in the two-way process of communicative interaction and that teacher-directed and dominated classrooms are not interactive…

Three experiments investigated the effects of age, context, and reflection-impulsivity on elementary school children's monitoring of comprehensibility problems in extended messages. Results suggest that perceptual support and cognitive style are two information-processing factors that have an impact on young children's monitoring of their…

Teachers of French as a second language are warned that the television news magazine, while offering a convenient format and some important information for instruction, may be limiting in its perspectives and assumptions. Careful attention to the program's varied content is as important as attention to its style. (MSE)

Concludes that students who have not mastered independent reading, who seldom receive instruction in critical thinking, and who are unprepared to engage in critical reading when required to do so, will benefit from instruction in critical listening as part of their reading instruction. (FL)

A small scale survey of hearing-impaired graduates from Aberdeen schools was carried out in March 1973. It focused on the relation between types of schooling received, degree of hearing loss and levels of communication ability, employment satisfaction, training for work, promotion, and social attitudes. (Author/RK)

Many students exhibit poor listening habits in the classroom, so that elementary and secondary teachers must do much repeating and reteaching of material. It is particularly important for students to listen well to achieve as much as possible in the mathematics curriculum. There are a plethora of sources available from which to select objectives…

This study described a sequence of steps that led to the increase of reading and listening comprehension. The targeted population consisted of kindergarten and first grade students in a rural community located in the Midwest. The problems of reading comprehension were documented through data collected by standardized test scores. The gain of…

It is accepted that a secondary school graduate should be able to communicate, i.e. to be competent in the language skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. However, most state departments of elementary and secondary education fail to identify the skill of listening. Although federal recognition of listening as a language skill came in…

The purpose of this study was to investigate what effect providing supplemental background knowledge in the form of a book talk would have on first graders' listening comprehension following a read aloud. Research shows that providing background knowledge creates a foundation and/or builds upon previously set schema on which further information…