Developing listening and reading skills of grade seven students at Mount Pearl Central High School

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a planned, regularly scheduled, taped listening program upon the listening and reading achievement of seventh grade students. -- The subjects included in the study were 67 seventh grade pupils enrolled in two classrooms. The experimental group was made up of 34 students; 33 students were in the control group. Each of two teachers taught one experimental group and one control group. Both the experimental group and the control group were exposed to the same language arts curriculum, with the exception that control group students were engaged in a free reading period while the experimental group participated in the program of listening skill development. -- A portion of the LISTEN AND THINK series was used as the listening program. It consisted of thirty taped lessons which were administered for 40 minutes each school day during a six week period. -- The Durrell Listening-Reading Series, Form DE, was used as a pretest; Form EF was used as a posttest. Pretest scores were used to equate the experimental and control groups. Means scores were used to compare posttest performance of the experimental and control groups. -- Analyses of the data revealed the following: -- There was a significant difference in the listening achievement of students who participated in the listening program. Test data for control group students reflected no appreciable gain. -- There was a significant difference in the reading achievement of students who participated in a planned listening program. Test data for control group students reflected no appreciable gain. -- The following recommendations are suggested: -- 1) additional research to explore the nature and development of listening ability or abilities and to apply these findings to the language arts curriculum is needed; -- 2) further experimentation with teaching methods and materials incorporating these materials in classroom listening situations should be conducted; -- 3) the problem of interrelationships among listening abilities and speech, reading, and other verbal skills warrants continuing research; -- 4) there should be conducted a listening skills study incorporating listening materials that are constructed to parallel whatever basal reading or other language arts materials are being used in the particular school