A large share of the adult population has severe difficulties in reading comprehension (OECD, 2016; Grotlüschen & Buddeberg, 2020). Both reading comprehension and listening comprehension involve the construction of meaning out of texts, thereby sharing many aspects (Kim & Pilcher, 2016). The question arises whether adults with low reading comprehension also show, on average, a low level of listening comprehension. While studies on adults with low literacy skills often focus on the examination of their basic skills of reading, such as decoding (i.e. the transformation of single letters or letter-combinations into their sounds) and word reading (see review in Bar-Kochva, Vágvölgyi, & Bulajić, 2019), less is known on their level of listening comprehension. In this article, we review the knowledge that has been accumulated from a handful of empirical studies examining the level of listening comprehension in adults with deficient reading comprehension.

The main results from six studies are presented. These were located through the accepted academic search engines using relevant search words (e.g. “low literacy”/“low reading skills”/“functional illiteracy” and “Adults” and “listening comprehension”/“oral language”). An equivalent search has also been done in the German language. Studies included in this review were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. In these studies, participants were recruited from literacy classes or from various types of adult education centers, which typically include a considerable proportion of adults with low literacy skills. Notably, the studies located were carried out in the USA. As there are different conventions according to which skill-level is evaluated, we first explain how skills are commonly tested and evaluated in American studies on adults with low literacy skills. In these studies, standardized tests are used to examine the level of the written and the oral language skills. The raw scores achieved by each individual in these tests are converted into a norm, which allows the evaluation of the individuals’ skill-level in relation to the expected skill-level in a broad population. In many cases, the raw scores are converted into a grade-equivalent score. In this manner, the individual’s raw score is compared to the average performance of students at different grade levels on the same task. The matrices used to convert the raw scores into grade-equivalent scores are based on large samples of students at different grade levels. An individual achieving, for example, a grade equivalency of 7.6 on a standardized reading task reads at the same level as typical students do after about six months in the seventh grade. In addition to grade equivalents, percentiles are another way of representing performance relative to a comparison group- usually the group of peers. The individual’s percentile score indicates the percentage of the norming sample that is equal to or lower than the individual´s score. For example, if an adult person’s reading ability falls at the 30^th percentile in a test normed on adults, this means that 30% of the adults read at the same level or worse than this person does, and 70% read better. The higher the percentile score (from 1 to 99) the better a person performs in comparison.

In line with these conventions, our report on the level of listening comprehension of adults with low literacy skills relate either to grade equivalency scores or to percentiles. In the table below, the six studies are presented, including information on the samples, tests used to examine listening and reading comprehension and the mean group results. The tasks mentioned in the table were taken from standardized tests which are commonly used in the USA. These tap the ability to understand spoken or written texts at the level of sentences or passages.  Participants in the studies mentioned had a broad age range (all were above 16 years). The studies by Braze et al. (2016) and Braze, Tabor, Shankweiler and Mencl (2007) included only young adults (not older than 25 and 24, respectively).

Notes:

¹ The studies included a broad investigation of reading skills. Only reading comprehension tests, which provided results in terms of grade equivalency scores or percentiles were mentioned in the table.

² Even-numbered items from the PIAT-R battery were used to test listening comprehension, and odd-numbered items were used to test reading comprehension.

³ SDs in terms of grade equivalent scores were not reported.

 

As can be observed in the table, the results across the six studies suggest that, on average, the listening comprehension skills of adults with low reading comprehension skills are lower than the ones that would have been expected according to norms. The grade equivalent scores in the listening comprehension tasks in the studies focusing only on adults from literacy classes were particularly low, ranging from a third to seventh-grade level (Barnes et al., 2017; Sabatini et al., 2010; Tighe et al. 2022). At the same time, the results also indicate a broad variance in the listening comprehension skills of adults with low literacy skills across the studies, as well as within the studies (as indicate by the reported standard deviations). In the study by Mellard et al. (2010), for instance, the mean listening comprehension skills were still at the average range (37th percentile). The heterogeneity of adults attending basic education programs in terms of background, cognitive and even reading skills is commonly observed in studies examining this group (e.g. Bar-Kochva et al., 2021; Gottesman, Bennett, Nathan, & Kelly, 1996). The results appearing in the table suggest that a considerable heterogeneity exists also in terms of the listening comprehension skills of these adults.  

Notably, as the focus of this article was to evaluate the level of listening comprehension in adults with low literacy skills, we did not include studies which reported only raw scores, or did not allow, for any other reason, the evaluation of performance in the listening comprehension tasks according to a norm (e.g. Fracasso, Bangs & Binder, 2016; Mellard & Fall, 2012). One study which does not appear in the table due to this restriction, but should be mentioned, is the study by Mellard, Woods and Lee (2016). In this study, 323 adolescents and young adults, considered as economically and academically at-risk, were examined. Participants were enrolled in a program of the United States Department of Labor, which offers education and vocational training to youngsters between the ages of 16 and 24 years. The sample could be divided into two classes based on literacy skills: an average literacy class (92%) and a low literacy class (8%). The composite score included performance in various tasks tapping oral language comprehension, vocabulary and syntactic skills, which were taken from different cognitive and language tests: Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001a), Woodcock–Johnson III (WJ 3) Tests of Cognitive Abilities (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2001b), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (4th ed., Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language, Syntax Construction (Carrow-Woolfolk, 1999). The report of a composite score which includes various tests makes it difficult to interpret the results in relation to norms. The profiles of the learners in these classes could, however, be compared between the two groups. This comparison did not yield statistically significant differences between the groups. The results suggest then that listening comprehension does not necessarily differentiate between adults who seek basic education as a function of reading level.  Nevertheless, these results should be taken with caution, as groups of very different sizes were compared.

Overall, it should be considered that the present review is based on relatively few studies, of which only three related solely to adults attending literacy classes. Nonetheless, the current results raise the need to consider oral comprehension skills when working with adults with low literacy skills. The strong link suggested between reading comprehension and listening comprehension in adults with typical reading skills provide support to this direction (e.g. Gonçalves, Reis, Inácio, Morais, & Faísca, 2021). Intervention studies focusing on the training of reading skills of adults attending literacy classes indicate that improvements can be achieved. At the same time, the effects tend to be small (e.g. Greenberg et al., 2011). This may raise the need to search for additional directions of interventions when working with adults with low literacy skills in literacy classes. The accumulated knowledge, however, still does not provide answers to the questions how listening comprehension should be approached in adult literacy classes, and whether the training of oral comprehension skills would actually improve the reading comprehension of these adults.

The continuing reading difficulties of adults with low literacy skills also raise the practical need to evaluate the effectiveness of assistive tools, which would allow adults with low literacy skills to master everyday reading tasks. Considering that some of the studies reviewed above suggest an advantage of listening comprehension skills over reading comprehension skills in the focused population, the reading-out-loud of written texts, for instance using a digital text-to-speech function, could be considered as such an assistive tool. Yet the reported difficulties of adults with low literacy skills in listening comprehension still raise the need to examine whether, or to which extent, the oral communication of written texts would improve text understanding in these adults.

References

 

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The authors

 

Bar-Kochva, Irit^1,2, Herrmann, Chantal²_, & Gerkens, Laura^1,2

1 German Institute for Adult Education- Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning (DIE), Bonn, Germany

2 Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of Educational and Social Science, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany