To speak well, you must first listen well.

Listening comprehension, not speaking, is the most important skill in language learning.

Your child’s ability to listen and comprehend spoken language of multiple utterances and oral texts (listening comprehension) is one of the necessary component skills in reading and writing development.

What is auditory comprehension?

Auditory comprehension is understanding what one hears through listening. Your child demonstrates auditory comprehension of a message by responding to it using language that usually references what he heard but is unique in its content.

This understanding will be demonstrated by different actions, such as following a command, answering a question, paraphrasing, or participating in a conversation.

Why is auditory comprehension important for learning?

Listening (auditory) comprehension is the precursor to reading comprehension, so it’s an important skill to develop.

When your child hears a story read aloud, adequate auditory comprehension skills enable him to understand the story, remember it, discuss it, and even retell it in his own words.

When your child is able to comprehend the information he hears, he will be able to:

• Follow simple to complex instructions.
• Follow classroom directions.
• Understand people’s questions and comments.
• Engage in conversation with others.
• Pay attention and attend to his teacher’s instruction.
• Interpret, retain and organize the information for learning and communication.

How can you tell if your child has trouble with auditory comprehension?

Children with deficits in listening comprehension often appear to not follow directions or understand particular concepts. Ask yourself these questions to assess your child’s auditory comprehension:

1. Can he answer different types of questions?
   • The ability to answer questions is depended on your child’s age.
2. Does he seem to forget new vocabulary easily?
3. Can he follow your instruction without any gesture, cue, or repetition?      
   • The instruction can range from simple to complex instruction.
4. Can your child repeat what you have said to him? If yes, can he understand and respond correctly to your question/instruction?
5. Does he have trouble reading and spelling?
   • These involve understanding sounds.

How can you help your child develop auditory comprehension skills?

There are many ways to help children who struggle with listening comprehension. But you need information about your child’s challenges to give the right type of help.

Start by closely watching your child’s behavior and looking for patterns.

You’ll also want to have your child’s hearing checked out to make sure there is no deficit there.

Here are 3 games to help improve your child’s listening comprehension:

1. Guess Who? – In reverse.
   • To identify a character on the board, instead of asking, for example, “does your person have green eyes?” give your child clues so he must listen, take in the information, and eliminate correct characters on the board (e.g., “my player does not wear glasses”).
2. Mother May I? – With Conditions and Exceptions
   • While players are supposed to ask permission, “Mother may I take five steps?” the game can be mixed up to encourage more listening skills and incorporate trickier concepts by giving your child alternatives or elaborate instructions to follow. For example, after being asked, “Mother may I take five steps?” you could answer, “yes, but only after you take two steps to the left.” This way, your child must understand and listen for the sequence concept, after and directional term, left.
   • Elaborate by incorporating conditional concepts (e.g., If you have brown hair) or temporal (e.g., Before you jump…).
3. Mixed Up Story Retell
   • Does your child have a favorite book? Does he know each line by heart? If so, use it for a listening game.
   • Take turns re-telling or narrating the story. You can do this while looking at the book, with puppets, or while drawing/recreating it.
   • Purposely retell the story with incorrect, silly, missing information or absurd mistakes.
   • Encourage your child to “be a good listener” by listening for these mistakes and correcting them.
   • These can include: changing the names of characters, events, details, or conflicts. Make the details as big or small as they need to be to target your child’s specific listening goals. For example, while retelling the three little pigs, describe only 2 pigs, or describe one house made from an incorrect material (maybe play-doh, wood, snow). This can be a fun twist on an old favorite for many children.

Auditory comprehension of a message is dependent upon successfully performing ALL of the auditory (speech) perception tasks addressed in previous articles: awareness, discrimination, and identification.

These listening skills do not develop sequentially from one category to the next. Your child might simultaneously be developing skills in two, three, or even all four categories, but at varying levels of complexity.

As your child’s listening skills improve, he will become a better communicator.

What challenges in listening comprehension have you noticed in your child?