The effects of a semester-long listening skills program on listening comprehension and reading comprehension

The purpose of the study was to determine the effect of a semester-long, listening-skills program and follow-up review program on elementary students' listening comprehension and reading comprehension. The study also investigated the impact of assessment techniques on task achievement.;The population consisted of 83 fourth-grade students, of which 36 comprised the treatment group and 47 comprised the control group. During the spring semester 1991, the treatment group received instruction in ten essential areas of listening for approximately 30 minutes per week. Review sessions were conducted during the 1991-1992 school year. The control group received no listening skills instruction during either year.;Students in both groups were randomly assigned to one of three groups for assessment purposes: listening comprehension only, reading comprehension only, or dual comprehension. For the assessment, students attended to the tasks of comprehending a passage and then taking an eight-item objective test over the passage. An impartial consultant administered two passages and tests to the students.;An analysis of covariance was performed. No significant differences were noted due to assessment or treatment, and there was no interaction effect between assessment and treatment. The P value for assessment did approach significance at.092.;Meta-analysis was calculated and practical significant differences were noted between the treatment and control groups in the comprehension modes of listening and reading. The effect size in reading (.9953) was considered a large difference, while the effect size for listening (.3747) was considered a small difference. The effect size data indicate that treatment of listening-skills training had an effect of improving listening comprehension and reading comprehension. This is consistent with research on the benefits derived from expertise in one comprehension mode carrying over to another language arts strand.;Several conclusions were reached by the researcher. Reading scores may have been higher than other modes of comprehension due to the way the assessment test was conducted. In addition, there appears to be an advantage in our language that favors a reading language as opposed to listening to it. The study revealed that more time should be spent on listening-skills development and that task achievement assessment in the area of listening should be studied further.