measure the growth of a student‘s listening skill over
a short period of time.
With respect to intentionally teaching students‘
to listen more critically, a teacher would be prudent
to begin the school year by measuring the listening
comprehension level of each of his or her students to
establish a baseline listening level. A student‘s
listening level can be established using the passages of
any commercially published informal reading
inventory. The teacher reads a graded passage to a
student and asks the student questions related to the
passage reading. If the student is successful in
answering 75% of the questions correctly, he or she is
moved to the next grade level. The listening level is
established at the last grade-level passage where the
student answers 75% of the questions correctly. This
baseline information is valuable in helping the teacher
estimate students‘ reading capacity and vocabulary
development; and ultimately, over time, helps when
evaluating how well the student has been responding
to listening instruction.
How often a teacher intentionally adapts a
reading lesson to focus instead on listening
comprehension depends upon how well students are
performing on the comprehension tasks required of
the listening-adapted lessons. Teachers should
modulate the frequency of their teaching depending
on how well students respond to the prompts and
questions in the listening adapted During and after
Reading Format, or the amount of information recalled
during the Guided Listening Procedure, or in the number
of predictions or quality of the discussions in the
Directed Listening-Thinking Activity. If students are not
doing well on the listening aspects of the lessons, then
more lessons focused on listening need to be taught.
Conclusion
A considerable part of the school day is spent
listening (Barbe & Myers, 1954; Cox, 2005; Rankin,
1928). Listening is a key to student success;
furthermore, accurate listening is needed for virtually
all adult jobs; listening is key as members of society
become more and more dependent on cell phones and
other forms of technology; and as more and more
books are accessed through various listening formats,
listening is becoming an alternative choice for reading
for enjoyment and information.
Yet, teaching listening skills has a history of being
ignored in our schools. In this article, a common
sense method is proposed to teach critical listening
with little change to the daily curriculum. Critical
listening can be addressed by substituting the reading
component of the before, during, and after reading
lesson format with a listening component, or by
substituting the reading aspect of a reading
comprehension strategy with listening. Furthermore,
audio-assisted passages can be practiced while teaching
comprehension reading skills using materials that
students find too difficult to read. Paul and Elder
(2008) emphasize the importance of teachers
intentionally addressing the skill of listening: ―Since
students spend a good deal of their time listening, and
since developing critical listening skills is difficult to
achieve, it is imperative that faculty design instruction
that fosters critical listening― (p. 34).
Today, our teachers need to ask themselves
whether or not they are consciously working to
improve student listening skills, particularly critical
listening skills? If not, they need to: (1) make a
conscious decision to improve the listening skills of
students, particularly their ability to listen to
information critically; (2) plan to have the students
regularly listen to text rather than read it in the
during phase of the before, during, and after reading
lesson plan format; (3) when possible, change
comprehension strategies so the reading component is
substituted by a listening component, and (4) take
advantage of modern digital technologies, such as
audio-assisted text, to practice critical listening and
teach comprehension strategies.
References
Aron, H. (1992). Bookworms become tapeworms: A
profile of listeners to books on audiocassette.
Journal of Reading, 36(3), 208-212.
Barbe, W.B., & Myers, R.M. (1954).