A large-scale study shows that most children starting school are not equipped to process the volume and content of verbal information they are given. They only gradually develop the oracy and listening skills they need to follow what their teacher says and carry out tasks. With as much as 95 per cent of talking in a primary classroom coming from the teacher, the implications of children not understanding or misconstruing messages are serious.

A listening skills test devised by researchers was used as a diagnostic tool to assess where the particular weaknesses lay. In one task, children of different age groups were asked to describe one of a series of similar but unique pictures; then they listened to a description of a specific picture and had to pick it out. Five-year-olds doing the task had a success rate of 10 per cent; nine-year-olds had progressed to 50 per cent accuracy. Eleven-year-olds only achieved 70 per cent correct answers.

Teachers have a major role to play in helping children to acquire the speaking and listening skills they need to keep up in the classroom. One approach is to encourage them to think about language as a vehicle for carrying information which is sometimes imperfect, and how to deal with difficulties that arise from its imperfections.

When a child says something that is unclear, a teacher consistently responding with comments such as, “I don’t know what you mean” or “I don’t understand that. Can you say it in a different way?” will, research shows, dramatically improve speaking and listening. Teachers can model clear speech themselves when talking to their class.

The Listening Skills Test - a New Instrument to Assess Children’s Pragmatic Ability by Peter Lloyd, Ian Peers and Caroline Foster, department of psychology, University of Manchester. E-mail: lloydp@fs4.psy. man.ac.uk