Language Comprehension
The comprehension of language is the foundation of community and relationship, whether oral, signed, or written. Further, language comprehension is part of the foundation of humanity. Understanding language is integral to the development of one’s intelligence and cultural identity. Therefore, teaching language comprehension strategies should be foremost on the agenda of a speech-language pathologist when faced with a child with a language deficit. Teaching comprehension strategies or skills is so powerful. Language comprehension can increase a student’s engagement and academic performance and help to foster a more positive school climate. (Strobel Education, 2023).
Language Learning Difficulties
Through my experience as a speech-language pathologist for over 30 years, I find that I can not assume that a child with language learning difficulties has the skills to understand even the simplest strings of language. Remember, the meaning of language comprises combined sounds, grammatical markers, syntactical structures, vocabulary, voice inflection and stress, and gestural and facial expressions. Often, teasing out where the breakdown is for a child, ends in realizing that the child lacks the ability to identify and focus on which information is relevant. The child may believe all information is important, resulting in feeling overloaded with language input and frustrated or eventually shutting down. Other times, a child might identify the wrong information as important and miss the message’s meaning altogether.
I have found that a systematic routine for understanding oral language works well with elementary-aged children. For example, the chant “Look, Listen, Think, Talk, Do” is a strategy I often teach young children when working on following directions or other language based tasks. This helps with directing focus, listening to input, making mental images, repeating information, and acting on a direction. It is also practical to teach children that it is okay to ask for repetition or support when needed. This is vital to building self-advocacy skills.
Listening Comprehension Activities
Considering these truths, I have created a series of Listening Comprehension Activities. These activities incorporate 2 types of listening; active and informational (Listenwise, 2022). Active listening requires a student to focus on the presented information in order to act on it. Informational listening demands that the student identify important information.
Each of these products incorporates the listening comprehension strategies of Look, Listen, Think, Talk, and Do. Embedded within are activities that practice following 1 or 2-step directions with modifiers. The task may be to build a matching scene from a narrative format. Filtering out relevant information is critical to these activities. A scaffolding or differentiated “hint” is also provided for each item. This is useful when a child has difficulty identifying and attending to the most important information for a specific directive.
I always encourage using my products with a mediated learning experience as it facilitates learning new or modifying old patterns to support learning and generalization of skills. For more on the Mediated Learning Experience see my post “The Mediated Learning Experience.
Take a look at my listening comprehension activities! They can be found on Boom Learning or in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Resources
- Strobel Education (Dec 8, 2023). The Critical Role of Language Comprehension and 6 Strategies for Enhancement. Strobel Education, blog. https://strobeleducation.com/blog/language-comprehension-strategies-for-enhancement/
- Listenwise website (2022). What is Listening Comprehension? https://listenwise.com/listening_comprehension/
