Fostering and Assessing Critical Listening Skills in the Speech Course

In this article we present the results of two listening assessments conducted in spring 2013 and fall 2013. Our primary goal is of a pedagogical nature and is concerned with the design and the testing of a tool that could measure students’ critical listening skill improvement during the span of a semester. A total of N = 370 students participated in two quasi-experimental studies in which we developed a program to foster and measure critical listening skills. Results show that students’ listening skills improved in specific aspects of critical listening at both times. Effects were larger in the second round due to adjustments to both the course curriculum and the assessment tool. Results support the impact of the intervention by modest to high effect sizes and the construct validity of the assessment tool. We consider the improvement that was found in the current study an important beginning and recommend that the practice of listening skills becomes an integral part of the curriculum at the undergraduate level.     

Assessing Critical-Analytical Listening Skills in Math and Engineering Students: An Exploratory Inquiry of How Analytical Listening Skills Can Positively Impact Learning

In this article, the researchers discuss the implementation of the Ferrari, Lynch, and Vogel Listening Test (FLVLT) to two STEM areas: Mathematics and Computer Science. The goal of the present study was to assess the improvement in students’ mastery of critical listening skills and how listening can help students to retain information. After students were introduced to the subject matter, two specifically tailored listening assessment tools were designed. Pretests and posttests were then administered in an introductory algebra (n = 29 students) and a network fundamentals course (n = 13 students). These tests were administered approximately four weeks apart. The data show that the FLVLT model is reliable for judging students’ critical listening skills and curricular knowledge. Furthermore, a 12% and 20% improvement in students’ ability to match the content pattern to a spoken message was found. In addition, a correlational analysis suggested that improvement in critical listening skills helped students’ learning.     

Assessing Listening in Elementary and Junior High Schools: An Examination of Four Listening Tests

The major object of the Calgary Listening Inquiry Project (CLIP) was the undertaking of school-based studies derived from teacher-defined problems and concerns with listening instruction. Another objective was development, implementation, and assessment of effective strategies and materials for teaching and evaluating listening. Four tests—Listening Comprehension Tests (LCT), Alberta Listening Tests (ALT), Test of Adolescent Language (TOAL), and Thinking Creatively with Sounds and Words (TCSW)—were administered. Discussion concerns the nature of these tests and how the use and study of them helped teachers not only to acquire data about students' listening skills but also to develop a vocabulary about listening and to define their questions. Teachers developed a Listening Profile for use as a student checklist for listening skill development and two Listening Awareness Assessment Questionnaires to obtain student feedback and to involve students as participants in CLIP.     

Electronic Narcissism: College Students' Experiences of Walkman Listening

In an effort to investigate the consequences of the electronic media on the audience, the author examines the impact of the Walkman on the experiences of the listeners. To study the experience of Walkman listeners, the author analyzed the journals of 40 college students regarding their experiences in listening to their Walkmans. In the study, the technological features of the Walkman, the expressive bias and the privatization, are specified and their impact on the nature of the experiences of the listeners are analyzed. The author argues that narcissism best describes the experiences fostered by the expressive bias and the privatization of the Walkman. Narcissism is used here to refer to the visceral sensation and the social segregation one experiences as one listens to the Walkman. The author concludes that electronic narcissism, far from being a pathological act, is in fact a sign of mental health.     

Action Research on College English Listening Course

Among the four skills (listening,speaking,reading and writing),foreign language learners complain that listening is of the most difficult skills to acquire. This thesis intends to explore action research on College English Listening Course and finds that the previous English background is not playing the decisive role in the following studies in listening and the teaching process and contents shall be reformed based on the needs of the learners.     

Listening Assessment: The Watson-Barker Listening Test

This article discusses the need for valid and reliable measures of listening behavior and how the Watson-Barker Listening Test was developed to measure the listening abilities of adults and mature college students. Sections of the article describe the nature and forms of the test, various validation procedures and research studies using the test. The claims of validity are partially supported by the data, and the Watson-Barker Listening Test has gained wide acceptance.     

A Content-Based Approach to Teaching and Testing Listening Skills to Grade 5 EFL Learners

English education has been officially incorporated into elementary-level education in Taiwan since 2001, with the key objective of reinforcing pupils’ oral communication in class. Although oral interaction involves a degree of listening input from interlocutors, listening has unfortunately remained a marginalized area in Taiwanese elementary education. Little is known about how to improve young learners’ listening comprehension and listening skills in Taiwanese contexts. The present study was carried out with 52 11-year-old elementary school pupils in Taiwan. An English course was designed to integrate pupils’ listening skills into a content-based course with a series of tourism-related topics. The results showed that the teaching of listening skills could be integrated into the content-based course and certain listening skills were greatly improved. Also, the study has implications for designing a topic-based course for teaching and testing listening skills, as well as for developing listening and speaking abilities in young EFL learners.     

大学英语听力影响因素及对策探讨

听力是大学英语教学的重要组成部分,然而听力是现实教学中的一个薄弱环节,学生听力水平不尽人意。以大学英语听力为视角,阐述影响听力理解的因素,分析困扰听力水平提高的障碍,并探讨提高学生听力理解能力的对策。     

高职院校英语听力分层教学模式探讨

由于高职院校学生入学时的英语听力基础普遍差异较大,两极分化的现象日益加剧,为使所有学生都能得到发展,必须打破传统的课堂教学组织形式．实施分层教学。分层教学模式为学生确定不同层次的教学目标,设置不同的教学内容,采取不同的教学方式以及不同的考核内容和评价标准,使不同层次的学生在适合自己学习程度的班级学习,激发学生的学习兴趣和学习潜能,从而提高英语听力水平和理解能力。     

On College English Listening Teaching from the Perspective of Psycholinguistics

In order to improve the English listening ability of college students,this study probes into a new college English listening teaching mode from the perspective of psycholinguistics.     

Intercultural Listening: Measuring Listening Concepts with the LCI-R

Listening is an integral part of communication, yet more research is conducted on the speaker as opposed to the listener. Previous research established a general schema of listening as a concept-driven behavior with four factors (Imhof & Janusik, 2006). Further testing by Bodie (2010) confirmed the factor structure and reduced the number of items from 33 to 15 (LCI-R). What is not known is whether the constructs are consistent across cultures. This study investigates whether the LCI-R can fit independent data comprising samples from the United States, Europe, and Japan. Results show that the instrument can be used cross-culturally when listening concepts are of interest and need to be measured.     

Health Risk Appraisal at the College Level

Abstract

This study attempted to determine if health risk appraisals with personalized conferences affected the “health age” of undergraduates at a large, midwestern university. One hundred thirteen (113) students enrolled in four undergraduate health education classes served as subjects. A nonequivalent control group design was employed with two of the classes consisting of students majoring in health-allied disciplines.

On the first and last day of class during the ten week course, all students completed a health risk appraisal questionnaire—“Health Evaluation Learning Program”—used to acquire past and present health history and present lifestyle practices. Data from the questionnaires were analyzed by a computer into a printout known as the “Health Risk Index.” All groups received their instruction from lectures. The control groups followed a popular college text and did not receive any feedback via the index or personalized conference. Each student in the experimental classes received a personalized conference with the instructor at which time their index was interpreted indicating the degree of future mortality risk. Students were informed that their health age reflected their risk compared to the risk of the average person of the same age, sex, and race. The principal hypothesis was based on the difference between one's actual age (chronological) and one's health age (risk). A 4-factor, 2-between, 1-within, repeated measures analysis of variance was used to determine the effect, if any, of the health risk appraisal with the conference on each group's health age and comparisons between/among groups.

Students in the experimental groups increased the difference between actual age and health age from pretest to posttest time significantly more than students in the control groups, with those not majoring in health-allied disciplines displaying the largest pretest to posttest difference (p<.05). Sex status did not significantly influence the age differential.     

Complexities in Assessing Marital Beliefs: Illustrations Across College and Non-College Emerging Adults

ABSTRACT

Although research on marital beliefs has been increasing in recent years due to cultural and behavioral shifts regarding marital transitions, scholarly work dedicated to the measurement of marital beliefs has been limited. Using a sample of 571 college students, the Criteria for Marriage Readiness Scale (CMRS) was assessed to see if results from a previous validation study could be replicated. Results largely replicated previous findings but suggested a shorter and slightly revised version of the CMRS. A sample of 102 individuals with no college experience were then also administered the CMRS to see if measurement remained valid across a noncollege population. Results suggested that the CMRS may not be a valid measurement in this population, and further tests revealed that the college and noncollege samples were not invariant in regards to the factor structure of the CMRS. Implications for the assessment of marital beliefs given the lack of research on noncollege samples is discussed.     

Defining Social Listening: Recognizing an Emerging Dimension of Listening

Social listening occurs in a variety of mediated contexts, but it has yet to be clearly defined in the realm of communication and listening studies. This report explores social listening as a developing listening type extending from the existing taxonomy of listening, posits a definition of its meaning, evaluates its role in organizational and interpersonal communication, and discusses its value as an additional listening dimension. Based on a review and synthesis of literature across multiple fields of study, we describe social listening as a dimension of listening comprising a blend of purposes complementary to the existing appreciative, comprehensive, critical, discriminative, and therapeutic listening types discussed in Wolvin and Coakley’s (1993) listening taxonomy. As mediated communication continuously evolves within the communication landscape, the urgency to understand social listening will surely increase. With this in mind, we introduce and define social listening as an emerging type of listening and as a means of attaining interpersonal information and social intelligence that can empower relationships and influence the way we listen to and communicate with one another through increasingly popular mediated channels.     

Compassionate Listening: A Framework for Listening to the Seriously Ill

Present conceptions of listening, such as empathic or therapeutic listening, do not provide a way of alleviating the sense of being alone felt by individuals who are seriously ill or suffering in some other way. Compassionate listening, a kind of dialogic listening, provides a framework for approaching these significant listening situations that emphasizes our interconnectedness and our shared humanity and that seeks to overcome the isolation so commonly felt during serious illness.     

Listening Competency on Campus: A Psychometric Analysis of Student Listening

Primarily used in corporate and organizational contexts, this study evaluates the psychometric properties of the 30-item Organizational Listening Survey (OLS) as a measure of listening behavior with a sample of undergraduate college students. The first study analyzed 1,475 students' self-reports of their listening behavior on campus, indicating a single-factor model of listening with strong internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .96), incorporating aspects of affirming the relational partner as well as confirming the message communicated. The second study involved students' other-reports of their professors' listening behaviors. It demonstrated high interrater agreement using the OLS to evaluate a common professor.     

高考新政与个体高等教育选择

高考新政中招考方式的变化,意味着过去被动的"一考定终身"现象将被打破,学生的自主选择将成为高等教育机会获得的重要决定因素。目前,我国有关个体高等教育选择与高等教育机会获得的研究还相对较少,国外这一领域的相关研究有重要的借鉴意义,表现在以下三个方面:其一,研究路径上,基于行动性路径的高等教育需求-选择研究凸显了个体主动的教育选择对高等教育扩张及教育机会不平等的影响作用;其二,研究取向上,以布东为代表的理性选择研究提出了影响教育获得的首要效应和次要效应,揭示了个体选择、成绩与教育制度对高等教育机会获得的共同影响;其三,教育策略上,高中-大学链接策略和个体教育信念对高等教育选择具有重要意义。     

Listening,Culture and Structures of Consciousness: Ways of Studying Listening

Listening research has focused on methods borrowed from psychology and the study of communication. This article describes a broader approach to the study of listening that encompasses quantitative and qualitative methodology and goes further to explore the larger field of human experience. Structures of consciousness are described that present very expansive ways to understand listening in cultural context.     

Culture-Centered Counseling Skills as a Preventive Strategy for College Health Services

Abstract

All learning occurs in a cultural context. Successful counseling can be achieved by training healthcare providers to interpret behaviors in their cultural context. The author describes a culture-centered approach, using a cultural grid that matches same/different behaviors with same/different expectations. Clients with shared positive expectations may display dissonant and apparently negative behaviors. Culturally accurate knowledge and culturally appropriate skills provide a three-level developmental sequence for more accurate and more appropriate healthcare guidance in such multicultural settings as those met on the college campus.