Listening in Primary School – The Connection Between Listening, Comprehension and Expressive Reading

Abstract

Oral message reception is a basic component of oral communication. It has a significant importance in society, due to its traditional function as a means of learning. Not knowing how to listen is an obstacle not only for personal development and harmonious interpersonal relationships, but also one influencing the formation of other communication skills. There is a tendency to consider listening a "role" or skill already formed at the beginning of the school years. Nowadays, it is being explored as a process which includes cognitive, affective and behavioral aspects. M. Imhof (Imhof, 2008) analyzes quantitative and qualitative issues of listening tasks in primary school German education. The results show an average listening time of 27 minutes out of 45 minutes, duration of a class, which represents 60% of the time. As for the listening sources, these are: the teacher (53% of the listening time, i.e. 14.3 minutes), others classmates (41%, i.e. 11.1 minutes) and media sources (6%, i.e. 1.6 minutes).

The school curriculum for Communication in Romanian / Romanian language and literature within is organized in areas of communication (oral and written) and basic skills (text reception and production), making the study of Romanian compatible with that of foreign languages into the same curricular area. Textbooks and the teaching tools less reflect this organization, focusing on the reception of the written text on text production, ignoring the role of listening.

The main purpose of the paper derives from the obvious importance of the listening activities, in primary school, taking into consideration the current educational context and the concerns regarding the reduction the of functional illiteracy phenomenon. Listening activities can, in some circumstances, facilitate new vocabulary acquisition, support the formation of a consistent and complete mental scheme of the narrative text. They can also offer patterns of verbal, nonverbal and paraverbal expressions, to stir feelings of attachment towards reading and books.

The quality of listening depends on both the receiver and the sender, and in primary classes this double determination must be looked at very carefully . There are landmark studies that investigate listening in the native language at a young school age. This it is an aspect that encourages and generates knowledge development, and the present study incorporates what is already internationally known and offers better perspectives on the importance of listening in the Romanian primary classes.