Listening Comprehension Assessment

Procedures:

• Record this assessment.
• Be prepared with multiple passages at multiple levels (on Blackboard).
• Tell the student you will read a passage to her, then you will ask her to retell it, and then she will answer questions about the passage. This will prepare her to listen carefully.
• Ask the concept (background knowledge) questions to find how much background knowledge the student has about the topic of the passage. Score her responses.
• Ask her to predict what the passage will be about.
  • Remind her of the concept questions you asked and then ask her for a prediction. Note her prediction.
• Read the passage to her. (Practice reading it beforehand.)
  • Remember to tell the student before you read the passage that you will be asking her to retell the passage and answer comprehension questions afterwards.
• Have student retell the passage to find how much and what she recalls immediately after you read it to her. Score her retelling.
• Ask the comprehension questions to assess recall and comprehension. Note her exact responses.
• Use the response examples given under each question to judge the correctness of her responses.
• Calculate the student’s comprehension score.
  • Independent? (too easy—try a harder text)
  • Frustration? (too hard—try an easier text)
  • Instructional? (just right—stop assessing listening comprehension)
• Her score will determine whether you read more passages or stop.
• In listening comprehension section of your report:
  • Note: 1) the names and levels of the passage(s) you read to her, 2) the passage level understood at an instructional level of comprehension, 3) the amount of background knowledge she had about the topic of that passage and the quality of her prediction, 4) the number of ideas and details she recalled, and 5) the number of explicit and implicit questions she answered correctly.
  • In your discussion of the results, provide direct quotations from the students answers to the comprehension questions, her responses to the concept questions, and her retelling of the passage(s) to support your conclusions.
  • Identify connections between the student’s level of background knowledge, her ability to recall ideas and details, and her ability to answer explicit and implicit comprehension questions.
    • Is her incorrect response to a comprehension question the result of limited recall or a lack of background knowledge? Is there a correlation between the number of details she recalled and her ability to answer explicit questions? How well can she use inference to answer implicit questions?
• With your report, submit all the protocols of all the passages you read to the student.
  • On each protocol:  
    • note student responses to all parts of the assessment;
    • record numbers of ideas/details recalled and numbers of correct and incorrect comprehension questions; and
    • indicated whether each comprehension question response is correct or incorrect and whether the results show an independent, instructional, or frustration level of comprehension.