Relations among oral reading, silent reading and listening comprehension of students at differing competency levels

Abstract Are there differences in comprehension when children listen, read orally and read silently? Do such differences exist for all readers? Eighty‐three students, grades 3–5, read orally and silently and listened to grade appropriate passages, then answered literal and inferential questions (Woods & Moe, 1977). A repeated measures ANOVA yielded several differences. For poor readers, listening comprehension was equal to oral reading comprehension and both were superior to silent reading comprehension. For average readers, listening comprehension was equal to silent and both were superior to oral. For good readers, oral comprehension was equal to silent and both were superior to listening. Discussion focuses on how this study's findings are similar to conclusions drawn from cross‐modality and self‐regulated learning research and are consistent with a stage model of the learning‐to‐read process in which comprehension increments in each modality occur at different stages.