Date of Award

7-1969

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Education

Abstract

Reading has long been recognized as a necessary skill but only recently has there been much interest in listening skills even though listening is the most frequently used language activity. Within the past decade many studies have indicated that listening ability correlates highly with intelligence, vocabulary, and report card grades, and some investigators claim that listening training will improve listening ability. If listening ability correlates positively with report card grades then listening training should aid academic achievement.

The present experiment has investigated the effect of listening training on the grade point averages of college freshmen. Since special treatment of experimental subjects can influence the subjects performance an additional control group, called the Hawthorne group, was added to this experiment. This Hawthorne group was given special attention by personal study assignments while the experimental group listened to tape recorded listening exercises. The control group was not told that they were part of the experiment.

An analysis of variance revealed that there was a significant difference among the groups and a further analysis was made and the variability was localized. A significant difference was found between the listening training and control groups but no significant difference was found between the Hawthorne group and either the control group or the listening training group. Based on these results it is indicated that the Hawthorne Effect and listening training are simply different levels of the same variable.

Comments

v, 39 leaves ; 28 cm. Bibliography: leaves 38-39.

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