Assessing Critical Listening Skills in Accounting Community College Students: An Exploratory Inquiry of How Exercising Listening Skills Positively Impacts Students’ Test Performance

Abstract

Although several studies have demonstrated the importance of listening skills in the classroom and in the workplace, business administration college programs seldom include teaching listening as part of their curriculum because of content saturation and credit hours constraints. In this pilot study, we describe how integrating simple listening activities in the classroom, without making major modifications to the curriculum, improves students’ comprehension and test performance. The study demonstrates how exercising critical listening skills while taking a test has a positive effect on students’ retention of information and test scores.