Listening Comprehension in a Bilingual Community*

Abstract

PSYCHOLOGISTS have developed several methods for the measurement of degree of bilingualism, or relative proficiency in two languages. For the most part, these techniques are indirect.' That is, the performances they describe, such as speed of naming picturess or the number of discrete words produced within time limits3 have a less than obvious relationship to the criterion behavior of relative linguistic proficiency. Furthermore, with the notable exception of a measure devised by Lambert, who compared the speed of responding to directions given in each of two languages, most of these techniques have described various aspects of verbal production, although relative proficiency can also vary along other dimensions, such as listening, reading, and writing. The technique which is described in the present paper was designed to yield not only a more direct estimate of bilingual proficiency than those reported in the past but also a measure of bilingual listening comprehension ability. It differs from other listening comprehension techniques not only in offering a measure of relative proficiency (instead of a score in one language or the other) but also in being devised to reflect bilingual proficiency in varying types of social context. The attempt to construct a listening comprehension test in terms of differing social contexts was made on the assumption that speakers vary with respect to the number and kinds of social situation in which they can communicate effectively.5 It was believed that a technique which was designed to reflect cornmunicative competence would provide a more ad quate estimate of the bilingual person's rel-