Article

Fostering and Assessing Critical Listening Skills in the Speech Course

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Abstract

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.

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... Critical listening skills play an integral role in students' learning processes in and outside the classroom. Inside the class context, students need critical listening skills as they should be able to separate facts from opinions, fantasy from reality, and accurate from inaccurate content and ideas from the teacher and their peers during all facets of the school day (Ediger, 2015;Ferrari-Bridgers et al., 2015). In today's society, which heavily relies on information transfer, young learners have easy access to multiple communication sources (e.g., the Internet, social media, radio, and television) and ...
... Critical listening skills incorporate discriminative and comprehensive listening skills but stretches well beyond it, activating multiple higher-order cognitive abilities. At this level, students should be able to determine and evaluate the quality, value, significance, accuracy, and truthfulness of the message and draw appropriate conclusions from it (Deveci, 2013;Ferrari-Bridgers et al., 2015;Floyd & Clements, 2005;Wallace, 2013). To be an effective critical listener, students have to possess different competencies, such as the ability to identify bias in the message, evaluate the speaker's arguments, analyze and uncover the speaker's intention, and separate facts from opinions (Al-Musalli, 2001;Deveci, 2013;Ferrari-Bridgers et al., 2015;Floyd & Clements, 2005;Fogelsong, 2016). ...
... At this level, students should be able to determine and evaluate the quality, value, significance, accuracy, and truthfulness of the message and draw appropriate conclusions from it (Deveci, 2013;Ferrari-Bridgers et al., 2015;Floyd & Clements, 2005;Wallace, 2013). To be an effective critical listener, students have to possess different competencies, such as the ability to identify bias in the message, evaluate the speaker's arguments, analyze and uncover the speaker's intention, and separate facts from opinions (Al-Musalli, 2001;Deveci, 2013;Ferrari-Bridgers et al., 2015;Floyd & Clements, 2005;Fogelsong, 2016). ...
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Running title: Structure of discourse. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-93) Support ... by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense ... monitored by ONR under contract no. N00014-85-C-0079 "Spons agency ... National Inst. of Education. Funding also provided by the System Development Foundation. Contract 400-81-0030"--Doc. resume.
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