Active listening

In active listening instruction teaching students how to listen actively while reading, teachers guide readers in learning to listen while others read. The listening reader follows the text as another student reads aloud. The teacher may also pose questions for the readers to answer while they listen.

Active-listening training improves listening and reading comprehension Interpretations made by a reader during reading a text and stored in stored the reader's memory in a way that facillitates the reader's ability to put what was read and interpreted to some use, e.g., to answer questions about that text. . It increases a reader’s participation in discussions, engenders more thoughtful responses to questions, increases memory for the text, and focuses the reader’s attention and interest on material.

For example, in Gloria M. Boodt’s 1984 study of training critical-listening strategies with fourth-grade to sixth-grade remedial readers, there was a gradual increase over the eighteen weeks of the study in students’ willingness to participate in group discussions and provide more thoughtful responses to direct questions.

Overall, four studies of this strategy met NRP scientific criteria. The students in the active listening studies ranged from first grade through sixth grade; they improved in critical listening inferring, questioning, and evaluating while listening , critical reading inferring, questioning, and evaluating while reading , and general reading comprehension.