Auditory Comprehension is a skill which must be developed by second language learners if communicative competence is to be achieved. While most programs treat the rudimentary aspects of listening skills with rather mechanical drills, exercises to develop this skill in more advanced stages are usually not included. However, with the trend toward…

Assuming that radio listeners are more interested in programs where the pace is faster, two versions of a six-minute interview were devised and tested on 97 adult church choir members. Prior to the experiment, participants completed a questionnaire that requested information on their age, sex, education, radio station preference, and listening…

This study investigates the development of listener skills during childhood, and the effects of introducing a brief plan for effective listening on children's listener performances. The subjects were 96 children, 24 at each of four ages (four, six, eight, and ten years) who were asked to play the role of listener in a referential communication…

In this investigation, the differences in psycholinguistic processing of written and spoken language and the psycholinguistic deficiencies of poor readers were studied by giving meaningful, anomalous, and random word strings to 18 good readers and 18 poor readers who were reading at the fourth grade level. It was found that in both spoken and…

This research was concerned with the applicability of a hierarchically-ordered test of achievement to the diagnosis and assessment of listening skills and reading skills. The results of a listening and reading achievement test which had been administered to 1,186 students in grades 2, 5, 8, and 11 were evaluated on a pass-fail basis for each skill…

This study is designed to evaluate the musical listening ability that children have acquired through present instructional practices. To obtain an estimate of what children learn, over 3,000 students in grades 4-7 were administered a Melodic Listening Survey (structured into nine subtests) by tape recording under the direction of their own…

This paper provides a format for teaching elementary school students the skills necessary to analyze and evaluate commercial propaganda. Three steps suggested for the teaching of critical listening are setting a standard of highly conscious criteria in the minds of the listener, sifting the evidence and making a critical judgment, and drawing a…

Introduces an activity that simultaneously teaches oral expression and auditory comprehension. Groups in a class listen to an audio text that gives only incomplete information. The gaps are filled in by the group. Students are given worksheets. Presenting topics and work materials provides an integration of aural and oral skills. (IFS/WGA)

Describes a third-year English test for fifth graders, with examples (and discussion) in the areas of listening comprehension, answering questions, asking questions, speaking about a series of pictures, reading comprehension, sentence conversion and letter writing. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Presents arguments for and against: the theoretical acceptance of language skills breakdown; the Unitary Competence Hypothesis/General Language Proficiency theory; and the existence of a separate listening comprehension factor in language ability. Also considered is the technique of factor analysis in language research. (CB)

Investigates the relationship between employee productivity with new technology and listening ability. Data entry employees from two divisions of a large corporation were given a standardized test to assess their listening ability. Results reveal that employees who received listening training performed at significantly higher levels than those who…

Outlines the format for a course dedicated exclusively to the teaching of listening skills at the intermediate and advanced second language instruction levels. Suggestions are made regarding instructional materials, testing, grading, assignments, class interaction, and organization. (Author/CB)

Presents and discusses results of study on the specific linguistics needs of Italian scientists who must use English for science and technology for study and work purposes. Writing and listening were considered to be the most difficult skills to master. Questionnaire appears in Appendix. (LMO)

Reacts to Michael Canale's paper, "Considerations in the Testing of Reading and Listening Proficiency," concentrating on three areas: (1) the nature of the receptive skills and the requirements of a valid instrument to measure them, (2) the design features that are consistent with his test design principles, and (3) adaptive testing…

Describes and assesses what can be achieved in the learning and testing of the receptive language skills with computer hardware now available. Provides guidelines and suggestions for the development of language learning and testing software. Defines three types of computer programs: instructional, collaborative, and facilitative. (SED)