
Active listening comprehensionĪctive listening is generally where most teachers focus their attention when working with students. Paul Sultzberger ran a study out of Victoria University in New Zealand that explains that passively listening to a spoken language – even if you don’t understand the word meanings – creates connections between sound patterns and words that are critical to learning and fluency. There also seem to be benefits to passive listening in language learning. Dr. It’s important to note that passive listening usually still results in some comprehension and learning. Passive listening is generally motivated by the listener’s personal, informal interest. Perhaps strictly for entertainment, perhaps to learn informally, maybe even to reduce the number of outside distractions. Passive doesn’t mean not listening – it’s just listening with a different purpose. Passive listening – sometimes called appreciative listening – gets a bad rap amongst educators, but it’s what most of us do while we listen to a podcast while we’re driving or an audiobook while we walk the dog. Appreciative or passive listening comprehension Generally, listening can be broken down into a few types. the relationship between the speaker and the listener.the situation in which the listening is happening.the goal of the listener in that specific situation.Sophie Haroutunian-Gordan (2011) at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy explains that there are four elements to which listening comprehension can be attributed: When teachers and administrators discuss developing student listening comprehension skills, they tend to lump all listening skills together. We will explore the five different listening categories below. Four of the five skills are grouped in what some people may call active listening. Those skills need to be explicitly taught and practiced in multiple ways throughout a student’s school experience for them to really grasp the nuances.


In reality, however, it makes more sense to think of listening as related skill sets: When discussing listening comprehension, education professionals often think of it as a single skill.
