The relationship between listening and reading comprehension of different types of text at increasing grade levels

Abstract

This study examined the hypotheses that (a) the relationship between listening and reading comprehension becomes stronger after decoding mastery; (b) the difference between listening and reading decreases with increasing grade level; and (c) similar patterns of relationship and difference are obtained with narrative and expository texts. The sample included 612 students in Grades 2, 4, 6, and 8. Students read and listened to two narratives and two expository texts and completed corresponding comprehension tests that were in the form of sentence verification tasks. The findings confirmed the first two hypotheses but not the third one. In the case of expository text, the relationship between listening and reading comprehension was weaker than the corresponding one with narrative text, and performance levels were comparable across all elementary grades. Moreover, reading comprehension levels were higher than listening comprehension levels in Grade 8, regardless of text type. The implications of these findings with respect to the dominant unitary process model and the assessment and instruction of oral and written language comprehension are discussed.