Two studies compared strategies used to improve listening skills in business communication settings. The first study analyzed the effect of discussion length and incentive level on the ability of 347 business communication students placed in differing discussion and incentive groups to identify main points in 22 short, recorded dialogs. Results…

An experimental test consisting of dialogue with intermittent pauses for responses and a white noise accompaniment was given to non-English speakers who were candidates for admission to the English Department at Bar Ilan University in order to evaluate aural comprehension. Development of the test and results are reported. (RM)

The challenge facing the speech communication profession is finding appropriate assessment procedures that are acceptable to administrators of state testing programs. The first option is simply to do nothing. A second alternative is standardized assessment. Speech communication professionals prefer a third testing procedure, performance-based…

Noting that the attention of the speech communication discipline to listening skills does not mirror the apparent importance of such skills, this paper examines five listening assessment tests--focusing on the strengths, weaknesses, procedural problems, and conceptualizations of each--that potential users should be aware of before selecting any…

When people say that what they hear is "over their heads," they are describing a severe information-based complexity (I-BC) problem. They cannot understand what is said because some of the information needed is missing, contaminated, and/or costly to obtain. Students often face these I-BC problems, and teachers often exacerbate them. Yet…

AN EXPERIMENT WAS CONDUCTED IN A TYPICAL SCHOOL SITUATION TO DETERMINE IF VARIATIONS AMONG TEACHER PRESENTATIONS OF LISTENING TESTS (READING ABILITIES) HAVE DIFFERENT EFFECTS ON THE RESULTS OF THESE TESTS. LISTENING TESTS WERE ADMINISTERED TO PUPILS OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA, AT THE HIGH SCHOOL, JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL, AND…

Defining selective listening as an intelligence gathering technique that depends on an individual's ability to access, monitor, and report oral messages accurately and to give processing priority to messages of possible intelligence value, this report describes one important application of the technique: overhearing the conversations of others…

The effects of listener egocentrism in communication tasks was investigated as a possible explanation for communication failure in young children, since such failure has often been attributed to the cognitive egocentrism of the child. Twenty-four children from each of four grade levels (kindergarten, second, fourth, and seventh) were randomly…

This study investigated the effects of prefatory statements (advance organizers) on the listening comprehension of 310 Cliffside Park, New Jersey, fourth and fifth graders. Six null hypotheses were tested: two examining the differences in listening comprehension between students of both grade levels who used and did not use prefatory statements;…

One new French course taught by short wave radio is described here, and the remainder of the issue is devoted to schedules of major language programs (French, Spanish, Russian, German and Hebrew) given on short wave radio in North America. Frequencies are given in kilohertz, wavebands in meters. Approximate reception quality under normal…

The main objectives of this study were to determine if listening comprehension could be improved by using a listening program, the Incidental Listening Program ILP), and to compile a number of listening activities or techniques, which could be used by teachers to help in this improvement. A total of 695 students made up three experimental groups…

Fourteen plays were designed to evaluate fourth grade children's abilities to respond to reading plays both with and without oral accompaniment. The study involved 378 children, representing a cross section of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, each of whom read half of each play silently and the other half while listening to a taped…

This report describes the development of a Literacy Assessment Battery (LAB) for determining the relative efficiency with which adults can comprehend language by reading or listening. Development of the LAB included: the tryout with adults of two listening and reading tests designed for children; experimental studies of a decoding task involving…

This article discusses the first draft of three objective tests given to students of English as a foreign language in a high school in Rome, Italy. Students' answers on the tests (Listening Comprehension, Reading Comprehension, Grammatical Structures) are analyzed. The tests will be rewritten, based on these observations. (Text is in Italian.)…