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

Abstract

One's ability to listen and comprehend spoken language of multiple utterances (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, and propose a direct and mediated model of listening comprehension. A review of correlational and intervention studies indicates that many language and cognitive skills contribute to listening comprehension, including working memory, attention, vocabulary, syntactic 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.