The document discusses listening comprehension assessments, emphasizing their importance in identifying reading difficulties in children. It outlines the process of administering such assessments, including selecting appropriate grade-level texts that engage the child's interests. The text concludes with examples of different types of questions to evaluate comprehension and suggestions for scoring retellings of the material read aloud.

1. Listening Comprehension
Assessment
• By Professor Michelle Commeyras
• University of Georgia
• commeyra@uga.edu

2. Listening
Comprehension
Listening comprehension may
involve looking at what is being
read. Think of a classroom scene
Listening where every student has a copy of
comprehension is the text and is instructed to
the ability to follow along while the teacher or a
understand and student reads out loud. Now think
think about of an out of school situation such
something that is as listening to an audio book.
read to you. Usually the listener is not also
looking at the print version of the
book.

3. Knowing a child’s listening comprehension
level can be useful in discerning
whether comprehension difficulties are
due to decoding.
For example, if the listening level of a
fourth grade student is good on a fourth
grade text but that child has difficulty
with comprehension when reading then
there is probably a need for instruction
on decoding and word identification.

4. • According to McKenna and Stahl (2009)“The
listening level is conventionally defined as the
highest passage at which comprehension of the
passage read aloud to the child is at least 75%”
(p. 63).
– It is difficult to determine what comprehending
something at the 75% level means. One difficulty is
that the child must either speak or write to show
his or her comprehension. Speaking and writing
are different language systems from listening.
“Research shows that listening, speaking, reading,
and writing emerge in overlapping, cascading
waves rather than in strict sequential phases and
develop in interacting fashion throughout early and
middle childhood (Berninger & Abbott, 2010, p.
636).

5. • Conduct a listening comprehension
assessment with a text at the child’s
current school grade level.
– It is less intimidating to be asked to listen to someone
else read and retell what you understood then to be
asked to read and retell.
– This is one reason to do a listening comprehension
assessment before a reading comprehension
assessment.

6. What level text should be used for this listening
comprehension assessment?
• For many children it is helpful to select something that is
considered at their grade level. It can be a narrative or an
expository text.
– For children in grades three and up it is informative to select a text similar
to their science or social studies book or other content area reading
materials. Why? Because listening to others read is something teachers
do to accommodate children who are behind the average readers in the
class.
– The question the tutor is exploring what the child’s level of
comprehension is when listening to grade level texts.
– If the child demonstrates understanding of the material then there is
support for the hypothesis that comprehension is not the child’s main
difficulty as a reader.
– If the child does not demonstrate understanding then listening
comprehension becomes something to work on during tutoring sessions.

7. Making a Listening Comprehension Assessment
• 1. What grade level is the child in at school? You need to know whom
you are going to be assessing and what their current grade level is. Let us
imagine that I am planning on assessing a boy who is in second grade.
• 2. What text will be used? The text you use depends on what it is that
you want to learn about the child’s reading. We are all going to meeting
the children we are tutoring for the first time. With listening
comprehension it will be what the child comprehends when they are read
something that is considered to be at their grade level.
• I have picked out three books about animals because I know that this boy
likes everything to do with animals.
– Hungry, Hungry Sharks by Joanna Cole
– In the Animal World by Silver Burdett
– Gorillas by Patricia Demuth

8. • All three are books with word and pictures. I will read each one to
decide which one might be best for the listening comprehension
assessment.
• After reading I concluded that they are all appropriate. There are
chapters in one book whereas the other two books are not divided into
chapters.
• If I want to limit the time for listening assessment then I should use “In
the Animal World” and pick one of the chapters which are about the fox,
the raccoon, and the otter.
• Although the pictures are in black and white and that might not be as
engaging for some children.
• My intention is to pick something that will be of enough interest that the
child will try to understand it.
• Interest is one of the factors that affect comprehension.
• If I chose one of the other books I would limit the listening
comprehension assessment procedures to a subset of 100 – 200 words
from the book.
• The subset of words should seem somewhat complete. Think about
whether you could just read that section of the book and still be able to
comprehend the content.

9. Selected pages 8 - 13

10. Examples of Questions and Answers for Three Types of Questions.
•Literal/Explicit Question and Answer:
What do you call the leader?
[An adult male called a silverback.]
Who likes company?
[Gorillas]
•Higher Order Thinking Questions
and Answer:
Why do gorillas live in groups ?
[They like being with each other.]
What did you learn about gorillas
living in groups?
[Some live in small groups and
others live in large groups. The
leader is an adult male with silver
hair.]
Vocabulary Question:
What does the word “company”
mean in the sentence “They like
company?”
[They like to be together.]

11. Now practice your questioning
abilities by thinking of a
literal/explicit type question and
a higher order question for each
page.
Literal/Explicit Question and
Answer:
Higher Order Thinking Questions
and Answer:

12. More practice on writing questions and
answers.
Literal/Explicit Question and
Answer:
Higher Order Thinking Questions
and Answer:

13. There are several
ways to score
retellings. One
way is to divide up
the text into idea
units and then
count how many
of those ideas are
include in the
retelling.
Here is a scoring
sheet I designed
for the pages 8 –
12 in the book
about Gorillas..