Affiliation:
1. University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW
2. Universität Hamburg
3. Ruhr-University of Bochum
Abstract
Abstract
Listening comprehension serves as a basic means for communication and participation in society. Unfortunately,
especially low-performing students have difficulties understanding informational content presented in a listening format, even
more so than with the comprehension of printed texts. Based on empirical findings that text features, such as global text
cohesion, have proven to be effective for promoting reading comprehension, and cognitive processes of reading and listening to
academic texts share commonalities, the question arises as to how much global cohesion can support students’ listening
comprehension. 140 ninth-grade students in German secondary schools listened to one of two informational listening texts which
differed in their degree of global text cohesion (low vs. high in cohesion). Listening comprehension was assessed with a written
test after listening. Regression analyses show that global text cohesion promotes listening comprehension and that the effect of
cohesion remains significant and stable when controlling for topic-related prior knowledge and language-related background
variables. Low-performing students profited more from the highly cohesive text than high-performing students. Thus, cohesion
contributes to the comprehensibility of informational listening texts which can have implications for the construction of
listening texts and listening comprehension instruction at school.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
General Earth and Planetary Sciences,General Environmental Science