Reading and listening comprehension

Reading and listening comprehension

Careful listening is a valuable lifelong skill. It helps us learn language, integrate stories from our past, forge human relationships, and succeed in school and the workplace. Starting from a very early age, listening is a key skill in helping children learn to read and become better readers. Understanding the connection between listening and reading is critical in supporting literacy.

With reading scores either dropping or holding steady on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), we see an important opportunity nationwide to teach listening to support reading comprehension. On the 2019 NAEP Reading Assessment, two out of three students did not meet the standards for reading proficiency in the 4th or 8th grade, and only 35% of 4th graders in the U.S demonstrated reading proficiency. Listening is a missing piece of the literacy puzzle.

Research establishing the link between listening and reading goes back decades. In a 2018 webinar, literacy expert Timothy Shanahan explained that many studies have shown a large and significant relationship between children’s early language development, including listening, and later reading achievement. Given the strong link between listening and reading, it stands to reason that improving listening comprehension skills leads to stronger reading skills. However, there has been a notable lack of research in this area, in part because valid, reliable measures of listening comprehension have been lacking. 

• Research establishing the link between listening and reading goes back decades. In a 2018 webinar, literacy expert Timothy Shanahan explained that many studies have shown a large and significant relationship between children’s early language development, including listening, and later reading achievement. Given the strong link between listening and reading, it stands to reason that improving listening comprehension skills leads to stronger reading skills. However, there has been a notable lack of research in this area, in part because valid, reliable measures of listening comprehension have been lacking. 
• This has changed with a new Lexile Framework® for Listening developed by Metametrics, the creators of the Lexile Framework® for Reading. In January 2020, Metametrics released a new research-based measure of audio passage complexity and student listening comprehension. With valid and reliable measures of both listening comprehension and reading comprehension, further research into the relationship between the two and how they impact literacy will be possible. The new listening measure has significant implications for teaching listening and supporting literacy in the classroom. Listenwise stories now include a Lexile audio measure indicating their level of complexity, which can be helpful in selecting appropriate stories for student listening.