RUNNING HEAD: Utilizing the Reading While Listening Strategy to Teach Reading to Students with

Disabilities 1

Utilizing the Reading While Listening Strategy to Teach Reading to Students with
Disabilities:
A Summary of the Research

Cortney Hedlund
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
SPED 710: Seminar in Exceptionalities
Dr. Kasper
March 25, 2021
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

Introduction:

The reading while listening strategy has been used for decades to help teach reading to

students with disabilities. This strategy is utilized by having a student read from a copy of a text

while someone else orates. The reader can be an instructor, or a recording. It is used to help

students with dyslexia and other reading disabilities with their word identification, decoding,

phonological awareness and vocabulary. This paper will discuss various studies that investigate

the effectiveness of the reading while listening strategy on students with intellectual disabilities,

mild to moderate learning disabilities, significant disabilities, and English Language Learners

with and without a reading disability.

Reading while listening is an adaptable reading strategy for students with various

disabilities. RWL pairs well with other strategies such as embedded text and rereading, which are

both common researched based strategies used in special education. Thanks to technology,

students no longer need to rely on another person to utilize this strategy. When RWL is done on

a digital device, the words can highlight themselves to help students better follow along with the

text. In both audiobooks and eBooks, the speed of delivery can be slowed down, and repeated as

often as needed. Despite technology improving areas of weakness in the RWL strategy, the

traditional styles of delivery still prevail. It can be as simple as a teacher reading aloud to a class

as they follow along with their book. Due to these aforementioned readings, reading while

learning shows great promise in all types of classrooms to teach reading.

Research:

Assisted Reading with Digital Audiobooks for Students with Assisted Reading with Digital

Audiobooks for Students with Reading Disabilities.

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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

Researchers Esteves and Whitten researched 20 upper elementary students across five

different suburban schools within a Midwest school district. The goal of the research study was

to compare the efficacy of digital audiobooks with sustained silent reading in students with

reading disabilities. Students tested and within the district were predominantly white. All

students had documented reading disabilities, and individualized education program reading

goals. Of the 20 students, 17 were learning disabled, and 3 students had Attention Deficit

Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). For validity purposes, the education and testing were

conducted in the resource room, and assessments were done by the primary researcher.

Furthermore, Esteves and Whitten accounted for Kazelski et al.’s theory that scores could be

influenced by the way the student felt about themselves and the activity. To account for this,

researchers provided a 20-question survey to students measuring these things (Esteves &

Whitten, 2011).

There was a pretest and a posttest administered 8 weeks apart. Researchers used the

DIBELS oral reading fluency measures to determine mean fluency score. After the pretest

students selected books of their choice. Then they were shown how to operate MP3 players to

access the audiobook version to follow along with during sustain silent reading time (SSR)

which lasted 20-30 minutes a day, 4-5 days a week. SSR already was implemented in this district

prior to the study. Students were also administered a tracking tool (Esteves & Whitten, 2011).

Researchers in the study found that there was no significant increase in reading fluency

when comparing the control group and treatment group. There was, however, a notable increase

in the total number of words read correctly per minute by the treatment group. The treatment

group had an increase of 17.03 words per minute, in comparison with the control group which

had a mean increase of 4.57 correct words per minute. The second question of whether a
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

student’s attitude towards reading would be affected by the RWL strategy found that there was

no significant statistical difference between student’s attitudes pretest, posttest, and between the

control, and treatment groups (Esteves & Whitten, 2011).

The Effects of Audiobooks on The Psychosocial Adjustment of Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents

with Dyslexia

The goal of this study was to measure the benefits that the use of audiobooks could bring

to students aged 11-16 with dyslexia. The experiment lasted for five months and tests were

conducted on forty students, with half in the control group, and half in the research group. All

students had a documented reading disability, additionally, some students had Attention Deficit

Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Prior to the research study, the participants had completed a

remediation program but had not used audiobooks in an academic or personal setting. The

researchers began and ended the study by having participants complete a questionnaire about

their school life (across various subject areas), social inclusion, and adjustment. Data was

collected on students reading ability so texts could be matched accordingly. Additionally,

students were tested before and after the experiment on their reading speed and accuracy.

Teachers and parents were also surveyed on student behaviors and attitudes (Lorusso & Molteni,

2010).

Researchers found that students in the experimental group were rated by their parents as

having greater improvement in emotional behavior problems than students in the control group.

When researchers surveyed teachers, however, they found no statistical difference in student

emotional and behavior patterns. There was also no statistical difference in between the two

groups when researchers examine student’s self-esteem, unease to school, internalized emotional

behavior problems, and attribution style before and after the experiment. Researchers do note
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

that self-esteem is a complex variable that depends on numerous factors (Lorusso & Molteni,

2010).

In terms of reading accuracy, the experimental group did show a significant statistical

benefit after the study. Researchers believe this is due to an increased training in decoding of

written words when participants listened the audiobook and followed along in their hard copy

text. There was also a slight statistical improvement in terms of reading speed within the

experimental group (Lorusso & Molteni, 2010).

The effect Of Read-aloud assistance on the text comprehension of dyslexic and non-dyslexic

English language learners

Babuder et al.’s study focused on dyslexic students whose second language was English.

The goal of the research was to determine if reading while listening would help English

Language Learners acquire literacy among students with and without dyslexia. Researchers also

divided students into three research groups, with students in a read-only group (control), listen-

only group, and reading while listening group. Students in Slovenia, where the research was

conducted, are all taught English by fourth grade. Approximately 75% of students in the study

started studying English prior to the compulsory grade level to do so. There were 233 students

studied that had no identified dyslexia and 47 students with dyslexia, and all the student’s first

language was Slovenian. For validity purposes, all students assessed were at the L2 level of

English language proficiency. Students in the study were between 11.1 and 12.8 years of age

across eight different urban schools excluding 14 students with dyslexia that were recruited from

a center in the capitol. Both students with and without dyslexia were evenly split in a randomized

selection between the control and experimental groups (Babuder et al., 2018).
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

Students were provided two informational texts at an “easy” level and two informational

texts at a more difficult level. Read-aloud assistance was provided for students in the

experimental group with a North American accent that the language learners were most

accustomed to. Furthermore, the average speech rate of audiobooks is typically 150 words per

minute, that speed was slowed to 100-120 words a minute which is more consistent with a

normal speaking rate. Students were asked six comprehension questions that required short

answer responses of approximately one to six words (Babuder et al., 2018).

The research found no significant statistical difference in reading comprehension between

the two experimental groups (listening only and reading while listening) in students without

dyslexia. There was also no statistical difference found in comprehension of “easy” texts for

students with dyslexia between any of the modes of delivery. There was, however, a significantly

higher probably of students with dyslexia answering comprehension questions correctly in the

reading while listening mode of delivery for difficult texts compared to the other modes of

delivery. The statistical differences between the RWL group and the listen-only group for

students with dyslexia was 45% better accuracy, and between the RWL group and reading-only

group there was a 22% increase in accuracy. When students with dyslexia were measured against

students without dyslexia in the various modes there was a statistical significance favoring

students without dyslexia in the read-only and listen-only mode. Most significantly, however,

there was non-significant effect of students with and without dyslexia in the reading while

listening mode of delivery for difficult texts. This finding is notable because it found that

students with dyslexia could match the performance of their peers without dyslexia using the

RWL strategy (Babuder et al., 2018).

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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

E-books for promoting vocabulary among students with intellectual disability as opposed to

children with learning disability: Can repeated reading make a difference?

This study examined and compared reading comprehension among students with

intellectual disabilities, and students with learning disabilities when using the reading while

listening strategy with e-books. Researchers also measured the effectiveness of the rereading in

conjunction to the RWL strategy, focusing specifically on the number of rereading required

among both types of students necessary to improve comprehension (Shamir & Moar, 2018).

Researchers based their hypothesis off the Channell et al. study conducted in 2013 that found

that students with intellectual disabilities (IDs) struggled with literacy skills because of

phonological decoding difficulties. Furthermore, researchers also attribute reading difficulties in

students with IDs to inadequate exposure to vocabulary, basing their hypothesis on the Browder

and Xin study conducted in 1998 (Shamir & Moar, 2018).

The researchers examined 30 students, half with LDs and half with IDs, 46% were boys

and 53% girls. The students had been integrated in a general education second grade class (aged

6.5-8 years) and did not have other learning problems (ADHD, low general intelligence below

70, sensory, and emotional impairments). All children studied were below the 25th percentile in

reading level (Shamir & Moar, 2018).

Researchers measured students on vocabulary acquisition by choosing the ten most

challenging words in a text with the reading appropriate level. Students were tested before and

after the experiment on the vocabulary terms. The method of testing involved researchers asking

students to point to the picture that illustrated the word’s meaning most accurately. Students

were also measured in their ability to read precisely and quickly using the Individual Word

Reading Test created in 2003 by Shani, Lachman, Shalem, Bahat, and Zeiger. The procedures
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

included three stages, preintervention (establishing a baseline use a pretest on vocabulary),

intervention (5 repeated readings of the e-book with assessments on vocabulary in between

readings) and postintervention (the final vocabulary assessment) (Shamir & Moar, 2018).

The e-book selected was a popular Hebrew children’s book selected for its characters,

familiar setting, problem, narrative triggers, and the solution-oriented ending. As text is read

aloud, the e-book highlighted the text so the students could follow along. During preintervention

testing students with IDs and LDs showed no significant difference in vocabular acquisition.

Both groups did not improve scores after one reading of the book. Findings did indicate that

students with LDs can benefit after two readings of the e-book, with the most improvement

coming after the third reading. These statistics were compared to children with IDs, which the

study found they required five readings to demonstrate improvements in scores. It is notable that

after the fifth reading, children with IDs significantly improved their scores. These findings are

significant because they reveal that students with both LDs and IDs can improve their vocabulary

acquisition from independent RWL strategies utilizing eBooks (Shamir & Moar, 2018).

Embedded Shared Reading to Increase Literacy in an Inclusive English/ Language Arts Class

The goal of the study was to examine the effectiveness of shared reading intervention

within a high school English Language Arts (ELA) course for a student with multiple

disabilities. Shared reading is another name for the strategy of reading while listening. The study

focused on literacy engagement, vocabulary acquisition, and listening comprehension skills

(Ruppar, Afacan, Yank, & Pickett, 2017).

The participant in the study was a 16-year-old girl named Caitlyn with significant

disabilities. She was enrolled in a 9th grade ELA course in the general education curriculum. The
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

researchers note that most students with similar disabilities to Caitlyn would be educated in a

special education classroom. Caitlyn’s disabilities were under the categories of other health

impairment and speech/language impairment. She had bilateral hearing loss in which she wore

hearing aids in both ears and utilized a personal FM assistive listening device. Caitlyn was

considered a beginning reader with skills in single word recognition after multiple exposures.

Caitlyn was measured against a task analysis that consisted of 12 different steps. The first four

steps targeted vocabulary, the next four engagement, and the final four listening comprehension

(Ruppar, Afacan, Yank, & Pickett, 2017).

The general education teacher and special education teacher worked together to create an

adapted version of The Odyssey. The text was simplified with about two or three sentences of

text per page with embedded definitions. The three vocabulary words were presented at the

beginning of the book with a picture, and a line drawing of American Sign Language. Peers read

to Caitlyn from her adapted book as she followed along (Ruppar, Afacan, Yank, & Pickett,

2017).

During the assessment, the teacher provided a cue to Caitlyn directing her on what to do.

It was determined by the interventionist that Caitlyn received approximately 7-8 cued

instructions before counting the score against her. The interventionist introduced new conditions

once Caitlyn responded correctly to at least 3 of the 4 steps in three sessions consecutively.

Researchers took five sessions to begin to establish a baseline, in which she had not

demonstrated any vocabulary steps independently. Researchers combined three strategies to help

Caitlyn learn, shared reading or reading while listening, embedded learning, and time delay. This

combination of strategies was called a “treatment package.” After the treatment package had

been implemented, it was observed that Caitlyn’s correct vocabulary responses increased from
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zero to 3 of 4. It was also found that Caitlyn had better engagement with the literature.

Comprehension, however, showed little improvement after the experiment ended. Researchers

attribute this partially to the complexity of the reading material, The Odyssey, as well as Caitlyn

falling behind in her class. As a result, she was learning older material alongside her peers who

had moved on to a new unit (Ruppar, Afacan, Yank, & Pickett, 2017).

Closing Paragraph:

Reading while listening has shown to be effective in students of all ages with disabilities.

Most promisingly, students who have a range of disabilities can benefit from this strategy. It is

easily adaptable, and can be done through audiobooks, eBooks, teacher-to-student, and peer-to

peer delivery modes. It has shown to be effective in vocabulary acquisition for students with

intellectual disabilities, dyslexia, ADHD, and other significant disabilities. Additionally, it has

been found to help students with dyslexia and ADHD comprehend texts better. These findings

are all important because this is a common strategy that is used in all types of classrooms. It is

essential that there is continued research and scrutiny on educational strategies to teach students

with disabilities. It is the law, and the duty of educators to only use research-based methods in

the classroom.

References
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Reading While Listening Strategy for Students with Disabilities

Adkins, D., & Bushman, B. (2015). A special needs approach: A study of how libraries can start
programs for children with disabilities. Children and Libraries, 13(3), 28-33.
doi:10.5860/cal.13n3.28

Esteves, K. J., & Whitten, E. (2011). Assisted Reading with Digital Audiobooks for Students
with Assisted Reading with Digital Audiobooks for Students with Reading Disabilities.
Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts, 51(1), 21-40. Retrieved
from: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/reading_horizons/vol51/iss1/4

Košak-Babuder, M., Kormos, J., Ratajczak, M., & Pižorn, K. (2018). The effect Of READ-
ALOUD assistance on the text comprehension of dyslexic and non-dyslexic English
language learners. Language Testing, 36(1), 51-75. doi:10.1177/0265532218756946

Milani, A., Lorusso, M. L., & Molteni, M. (2010). The effects of audiobooks on the psychosocial
adjustment of pre-adolescents and adolescents with dyslexia. Dyslexia, 16(1), 87-97.
doi:10.1002/dys.397

Ruppar, A., Afacan, K., Yang, Y., & Pickett, K. (2017). Embedded Shared Reading to Increase
Literacy in an Inclusive English/Language Arts Class: Preliminary Efficacy and Ecological
Validity. Education and Training in Autism and Developmental Disabilities, 52(1), 51-63.
doi:10.2307/26420375

Shamir, A., & Maor, R. (2018). E-books for promoting vocabulary among students with
intellectual disability as opposed to children with learning disability: Can repeated reading
make a difference? Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, 17(2), 164-177.
doi:10.1891/1945-8959.17.2.164