Most classroom teachers are aware of the different types of comprehension and how these might be defined. There are practical definitions, as well as research definitions.
Here in Australia, it’s quite a common practice for teachers to orally read a novel or other text aloud to their students. This is with the best of intentions to motivate their students to read more, to expose students to wide reading and wide vocabulary, and to model fluent, expressive reading.
The question that comes to my mind is whether all or any of these worthwhile goals are achieved? And how would you know?
Recent research, late 2018, has begun to examine whether listening comprehension and reading comprehension are different, or whether they are part of one comprehension skill.
The jury is still out!
The simple view does bring to mind listening comprehension – except that the actual term used is “linguistic comprehension” – and this can be defined in many ways.
Berninger and Abbott’s 2010 paper takes a broader view, and considers listening comprehension, reading comprehension, written expression and oral expression when reading aloud. Their findings provide evidence of the complexities of these concepts, and suggest these connections vary across grades.
This may have implications for teachers in some grades, as to whether their oral reading might be making a difference for their class? Berninger & Abbott’s paper is freely available. My next post will continue with more discussion of this issue…
Berninger, V.W. & Abbott, R.D. (2010). Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression: Related Yet Unique Language Systems in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7, Journal of Educational Psychology, 102, 3, 635–651.
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