Running head: LISTENING WHILE READING

Listening While Reading: a Study in Comprehension

Johnny Allred
Weber State University

LISTENING WHILE READING

Listening While Reading: a Study in Comprehension

Researchers and reading teachers are consistently looking for and evaluating the methods
used to increase reading comprehension. Students of all ages vary in their abilities to read and in
their abilities to comprehend what they read, but research in the field of reading comprehension
has resulted in the discovery of many practices that educators can use generally to improve
comprehension. The common and evolving practice which is at the center of this literature
review is listening while reading. An analysis of the literature of reading and listening
comprehension shows disparity in whether the act of reading and the act of listening use similar
cognitive processes. The analysis also shows that listening while reading increases vocabulary
more than reading alone (Smolkin & Donovan, 2001), and it increases overall factual
comprehension of the text (Swain et al., 2012).
Reading and Listening as Similar Cognitive Processes
Upon an analysis of the literature involving reading and listening, there are obvious
differences in how a student achieves comprehension. When viewing the printed page, for
example, some might say it is easy to skim the information to get several main ideas; that
opportunity is not available with listening (Lund, 1991). Readers go at their own pace, while
listeners must generally keep pace with the audio. Reading teachers, therefore, could present the
claim that reading should not be presented with an audio supplement because they are two
different tasks. Further research, however, claimed that a student with strong reading ability also
exhibits strong listening ability (Smiley et al., 1977).
Lund (1991) conducted research designed to reveal the relationship between reading and
listening comprehension. In conducting this research, he asked, Can the skills and strategies
learned in one modality be applied to the other, or do they need to be taught and practiced in

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each modality, perhaps with significant modifications? (Lund, 1991, p. 196). The experiment
was conducted by having teachers engage in direct instruction before and after the experiment
(Lund, 1991). The subjects of this study received text instructions and text passages to read.
Some students in the study heard the text through headphones while they were reading, and some
students simply read the text once, thoroughly and at their own speed, without going back over
the text to study it (Lund, 1991). The levels of reading and listening comprehension were scored
based on the answers the students gave at the end of the session. After calculating scores and
analyzing the data, the researcher found that the students who listened while reading recalled a
greater number of higher order ideas, and they produced more creative constructs for the
text, while the students who read the text with no audio recalled comparatively more detail
than did listeners (Lund, 1991, p. 200). Connecting this research to its pedagogical implications,
the researcher claimed that reading and listening are different modalities that develop on
different schedules in students, and that they require differentiated instruction in the classroom
(Lund, 1991).
In another study, the relationship between listening and reading comprehension was
investigated with the hypothesis that deficient readers were also deficient listeners, and that
proficient readers were also proficient listeners (Smiley et al., 1977). The research question
focused on analyzing a students ability to extract meaning from written and oral messages. The
researchers hypothesized that reading and listening comprehension utilize the same mental
processes (Smiley et al., 1977).
A group of 36 junior high students were tested for their abilities to read passages and
respond to comprehension questions. Twenty-one of these students were reading at or above
grade level, and the other 15 were in a remedial reading program requiring its participants to be

LISTENING WHILE READING

reading two or more years below grade level (Smiley et al., 1977). A t-test sampling procedure
was used. One group read the first passage and listened to the second, while the other group read
the second passage and listened to the first (Smiley et al., 1977). Good readers appeared to be
good listeners and deficient readers appeared to be deficient listeners (Smiley et al., 1977). These
findings supported the claim that listening and reading use similar cognitive processes, and that
reading teachers can utilize the skill of listening as a supplement to their instruction. A
comparison of the research done by Smiley et al. (1977) and Lund (1991) showed contradicting
ideas about the relationship between listening and reading: The former revealed that there is a
significant correlation between a students listening ability and her reading ability, while the
study conducted by the latter revealed that there are marked differences in the effects of reading
versus listening. Further investigation is needed to clarify these findings.
Listening While Reading Enriches Vocabulary Knowledge
Reading fictional stories and other texts in the classroom can be used to help young
students develop their vocabularies. As students are exposed to new stories, they see new words
and phrases and have an opportunity to decode, understand, and incorporate those words into
their language. This process is called language acquisition (Smolkin and Donovan, 2001, p.
98), and it is vital to a young students development of the ability to comprehend the world.
The literature showed that students were able to strengthen their vocabularies by
connecting new words and ideas to their existing knowledge (Smolkin & Donovan, 2001). This
connecting of new words to an existing framework in a young mind is crucial in the process of
language acquisition, and it is strengthened through the listening process. As children
listenthey seem to be working actively to integrate new information with their existing
understandings (Smolkin & Donovan, 2001, p. 108). There was a strong connection between

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informational text read aloud activities and an increase in vocabulary among first-grade
students in their study (Smolkin & Donovan, 2001).
Audiobooks and other listening activities have a positive impact on a students
vocabulary. The use of audiobooks to promote vocabulary development, fluency, and
comprehension was an effective intervention in multiple experiments (Grover & Hannegan,
2012, p. 10). The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for
eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children and that audiobooks have shown to
provide this to classrooms and homes across the country (Grover & Hannegan, 2012, p. 10). This
claim was also supported by Santoro, Chard, Howard, and Baker (2008). Students from
classrooms where read alouds were used exhibited higher levels of comprehension and
vocabulary knowledge and included more accurate, higher quality information in retellings
(Santoro et al., 2008, p. 398). Existing literature demonstrated consistent support for using audio
to improve vocabulary knowledge.
This increase in vocabulary through listening while reading is especially significant when
dealing with English-Language Learners (ELL). Not only do audiobooks increase the ELLs
vocabulary, but audiobooks also increase the students ability to explain what he is reading to
others. Audiobooks are a scaffold that allows students to experience literature above their actual
reading level, and to encourage participation in class discussions with more proficient readers
(Grover & Hannegan, 2012, p. 12). For proficient readers and beginning readers alike, a
students vocabulary increased when he read new material, and it increased even more noticeably
when he listened while reading.

LISTENING WHILE READING

Listening While Reading Increases Factual Knowledge and Recall of Text

Perhaps the most widely discussed and researched aspect of listening while reading is the
study of how listening affects factual knowledge and recall of text details and overall text
comprehension. For reading teachers, this is a valuable and significant area of research, because
it could justify or discount the reasons for including audiobook listening activities in the reading
classroom. An analysis of the literature surrounding this topic produced mixed results.
Schmitt, Hale, McCallum, and Mauck (2011) examined the effect of listening while
reading on overall factual and inferential comprehension of text. The study was designed to
investigate listening-while-reading using text-to-speech technology as an accommodation used to
increase reading comprehension among below-grade readers. Accommodations are used within
the teaching environment in an attempt to provide equal access to curriculum content thereby
leveling the playing field between students with and without academic skill deficits (Schmitt,
Hale, McCallum, & Mauck, 2011, p. 37). The study was significant to the education field
because it helped answer answer whether listening to audio while reading text was an effective
accommodation to help struggling readers comprehend what they were reading.
Students were selected who were labeled as general education remedial readers (Schmitt
et al., 2011). Students were selected from different grades: 6 sixth-graders, 10 seventh-graders,
and 9 eighth-graders (Schmitt et al., 2011). Books were used that were assigned specific grade
levels based on the average number of syllables and sentences for each passage (Schmitt et al.,
2011). Each participant was given passages that corresponded to his or her grade. From these
passages, ten multiple choice questions were supplied within the books; five of these questions
were evaluating factual comprehension and five were evaluating inferential comprehension
(Schmitt et al., 2011). Participants would listen to the audio while reading one day, and then they

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would read silently with no audio the next day (Schmitt et al., 2011). They would then be tested
on factual and inferential comprehension. There was no significant difference in total
comprehension performance between the two conditions (listening while reading versus silent
reading), nor was there any significant difference between factual and inferential comprehension
(Schmitt et al., 2011).
Swain, Leader-Janssen, and Conley (2012) studied the effect of listening while reading
on comprehension. A single fifth-grade student who was struggling with reading fluency was
examined. Three different reading interventions for this student were employed, one of which
was listening while reading (Swain et al., 2012). A computer read expository passages to the
student while he read along with his own copy of the text, and in a different intervention an
expository passage was read to the student by an adult proctor (Swain et al., 2012). Factual text
recall questions were then supplied to the student to evaluate his level of comprehension. These
intervention scores were compared against the students baseline scores, which were computed
with regular silent reading methods (Swain et al., 2012).
The computer-read and human-read listening comprehension evaluations showed a rate
of improvement more than two times the expected growth rateof a student who was
performing at the 10th percentile for reading, as was the student in this study (Swain et al., 2012,
p. 15). The researchers concluded that their hypothesisthat listening would increase fluency
and comprehensionwas supported by their results (Swain et al., 2012).
Summary
The literature and research surrounding the topic of listening while reading is increasing
in recent years, and the practice of listening is one that is being used more widely in the
classroom than in past years. The existing research was in agreement that vocabulary knowledge

LISTENING WHILE READING

and application was bolstered through listening while reading. None of these studies showed
significant evidence to prove the contrary with regards to vocabulary. The research was
inconclusive whether listening and reading use similar cognitive processes. There were data that
showed similarities between the two modalities (e.g., good readers tend to be good listeners,
while deficient readers tend to be deficient listeners), and there were data that showed differences
between the two modalities (e.g., listening while reading resulted in more higher order responses,
reading silently resulted in more thorough recall of text details). For the question regarding
overall reading comprehension when using listening activities, the results were also ambivalent.
Some studies showed no significant differences between silent reading and listening while
reading, yet others showed a marked improvement in reading comprehension using listening
techniques. Further study is needed in this field to answer these questions and to give reading
teachers more concrete evidence regarding the instructional practice of listening while reading.

LISTENING WHILE READING

9
References

Ciampa, K. (2012). ICANREAD: The effects of an online reading program on Grade 1 students
engagement and comprehension strategy use. Journal of Research On Technology In
Education, 45(1), 27-59.
Grover, S., & Hannegan, L. D. (2012). Listening to Learn: Audiobooks Supporting Literacy.
American Library Association.
Lund, R. J. (1991). A comparison of second language listening and reading comprehension.
Modern Language Journal, 75(2), 196-204.
Santoro, L. E., Chard, D. J., Howard, L., & Baker, S. K. (2008). Making the very most of
classroom read alouds to promote comprehension and vocabulary. Reading Teacher,
61(5), 396-408.
Schmitt, A. J., Hale, A. D., McCallum, E., & Mauch, B. (2011). Accommodating remedial
readers in the general education setting: Is listening-while-reading sufficient to improve
factual and inferential comprehension?. Psychology In The Schools, 48(1), 37-45.
doi:10.1002/pits.20540
Smiley, S., Oakley, D., Worthen, D., Campione, J., & Brown, A. (1977). Recall of thematically
relevant material by adolescent good and poor readers as a function of written versus oral
presentation. Technical Report No. 23.
Smolkin, L. B., & Donovan, C. A. (2001). The contexts of comprehension: The information book
read aloud, comprehension acquisition, and comprehension instruction in a first-grade
classroom. The Elementary School Journal, 102(2), 97-122.
Swain, K. D., Leader-Janssen, E. M., & Conley, P. (2012). Effects of repeated reading and
listening passage preview on oral reading fluency. Reading Improvement, 50(1), 12-18.