On the importance of listening comprehension

Abstract

The simple view of reading highlights the importance of two primary components which account for individual differences in reading comprehension across development: word recognition (i.e., decoding) and listening comprehension. While assessments and interventions for decoding have been the focus of pedagogy in the past several decades, the importance of listening comprehension has received less attention. This paper reviews evidence showing that listening comprehension becomes the dominating influence on reading comprehension starting even in the elementary grades. It also highlights a growing number of children who fail to develop adequate reading comprehension skills, primarily due to deficient listening comprehension skills (i.e., poor comprehenders). Finally we discuss key language influences on listening comprehension for consideration during assessment and treatment of reading disabilities.

Keywords: Listening; comprehension; language; literacy; poor comprehender.

Figure 1

Simple view of reading (Gough & Tumner, 1986).

Figure 2

The changing nature of reading comprehension and poor reader sub-groups over time. Graphs show the percentage of variance accounted for by word recognition, listening comprehension, and the shared variance of the two to explain reading comprehension, alongside the percentage of each poor reader sub-type amongst poor readers across 2^nd, 4^th, and 8^th grades (Catts et al., 2005).