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Interventions in Learning Disabilities pp 159–173Cite as

What Is Listening Comprehension and What Does It Take to Improve Listening Comprehension?

Part of the Literacy Studies book series (LITS,volume 13)

Abstract

One’s ability to listen and comprehend spoken language of multiple utterances and oral texts (i.e., listening comprehension) is one of the necessary component skills in reading and writing development. In this chapter, we review theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence of listening comprehension development and improvement. A review of correlational and intervention studies indicates that many language and cognitive skills contribute to listening comprehension, including working memory, attention, vocabulary, grammatical knowledge, inferencing, theory of mind, and comprehension monitoring. Although limited in number, studies indicate that these skills are malleable. We conclude that listening comprehension instruction should be an integral part of reading and writing instruction, incorporating these multiple language and cognitive skills. Instruction on these components can be incorporated into existing instruction such as bookreading or reading comprehension instruction.

Keywords

  • Listening comprehension
  • Vocabulary
  • Language
  • Cognitive
  • Intervention
  • Reading comprehension
  • Writing

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. 1.

    We acknowledge that comprehension of sign language is listening comprehension, but use spoken language following conventional use of the term.

  2. 2.

    Note that Perfetti and colleagues also had a similar hierarchical representation of comprehension processes in their reading comprehension models (e.g., Perfetti & Stafura, 2014).

  3. 3.

    Note that we use the term, skill, to refer to both processes/capacity and knowledge.

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Acknowledgements

Work on this chapter was supported by NRF-2010-330-B00299 from the National Research Foundation of Korea, and R305A130131 and R305F100027 from Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education to the first author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. We would like to thank the funding agencies, and study participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Education and Florida Center for Reading Research, Florida State University, 1114 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL, 32306, USA

    Young-Suk Grace Kim

  2. Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Heather Pilcher

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  1. Young-Suk Grace Kim
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Correspondence to Young-Suk Grace Kim .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Rachel Schiff

  2. College of Education & Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

    R. Malatesha Joshi

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Kim, YS.G., Pilcher, H. (2016). What Is Listening Comprehension and What Does It Take to Improve Listening Comprehension?. In: Schiff, R., Joshi, R. (eds) Interventions in Learning Disabilities. Literacy Studies, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31235-4_10

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