Measuring Listening Comprehension and Predicting Language Development in At-Risk Preschoolers

Abstract

Listening comprehension involves the ability to understand and extract meaning from spoken sentences, stories, and instruction. This skill is vital for young children and has long-term effects on school achievement, employability, income, and participation in society. There is a lack of measures of young children's listening comprehension skills. We report on a new measure of listening comprehension (LURI) that we tested in a group of at-risk preschoolers. Using IRT (Item Response Theory) analysis, we examined the psychometric properties of the instrument. Moreover, in a series of regressions, we found that the LURI measure predicted a range of other language skills better than standardized measures. Thus, the LURI test is a reliable and valid measure of listening comprehension. Assessing listening comprehension is a time-effective way of measuring a skill critically important to language development and represents the product of a range of different oral language processes.

A comparative study between Iraqi and Jordanian EFL students' metacognitive awareness of listening to lectures

“…Listening skills play a significant role in EFL students' language development. Hagen et al (2021), Mart (2020), Sejdiu (2017), Kim and Pileher (2016), and Renukadevi (2014) found a strong correlation between students' language achievement and mastering listening skills. Some difficulties and obstacles accompany mastering listening, and to overcome them, metacognitive strategies are the solution.…”

The Relationship Between Cognitive-Linguistic Task Difficulty and L1-L2 Interaction for Academic Listening Comprehension in Turkish–dutch Emergent Bilinguals

“…Without understanding speech at the right level, learning schoolrelated skills, including language/literacy skills, will be impeded (Andringa et al, 2012;Rost, 2016). Most importantly, LC can serve as an index for children's development on different integrated aspects of oral language (Hagen et al, 2021;Hogan et al, 2014). There is also evidence that LC in L1 and L2 predicts school outcomes of immigrant/minority children (Hoff, 2013, Prevoo et al, 2016.…”

A Different View on the Simple View of Reading

“…A third common assessment used to investigate students' language or listening comprehension skills is a narrative task, either separately or as part of a language comprehension test battery (e.g., Catts et al, 2015;Kendeou et al, 2009;Storch & Whitehurst, 2002). When assessing narrative skills, investigators required students to produce a narrative and/or retell one provided by an examiner (e.g., Catts et al, 1999;Kim, 2017;Lonigan et al, 1998;Speece et al, 1999), and/or answer factual and inferential questions about a presented story (e.g., Catts et al, 2012Catts et al, , 2015Hagen et al, 2021;Massonnié et al, 2019).…”