Impact of global text cohesion on students’ listening comprehension of informational listening texts

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.