Reading Psychology, 26:55–80, 2005 Copyright C  2005 Taylor & Francis Inc. 0270-2711/05 $12.00 + .00 DOI: 10.1080/02702710590910584 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LISTENING AND READING COMPREHENSION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF TEXT AT INCREASING GRADE LEVELS IRENE-ANNA N. DIAKIDOY Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus POLYXENI STYLIANOU Agrokipia Elementary School and University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus CHRISTINA KAREFILLIDOU and PANAYIOTA PAPAGEORGIOU Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus This study examined the hypotheses that (a) the relationship between listening and reading comprehension becomes stronger after decoding mastery; (b) the dif- ference between listening and reading decreases with increasing grade level; and (c) similar patterns of relationship and difference are obtained with narrative and expository texts. The sample included 612 students in Grades 2, 4, 6, and 8. Students read and listened to two narratives and two expository texts and completed corresponding comprehension tests that were in the form of sentence verification tasks. The findings confirmed the first two hypotheses but not the third one. In the case of expository text, the relationship between listening and reading comprehension was weaker than the corresponding one with narrative text, and performance levels were comparable across all elementary grades. More- over, reading comprehension levels were higher than listening comprehension levels in Grade 8, regardless of text type. The implications of these findings with respect to the dominant unitary process model and the assessment and instruction of oral and written language comprehension are discussed. By the time children enter school, they have acquired to various degrees the skills that enable them to use and understand oral lan- guage in a variety of contexts (Snow, 1983; Wells, 1986). Despite the acknowledged differences between oral and written language This research was supported by an Elva Knight Research Grant from the International Reading Association to the first author. We thank George Spanoudes for his help in data analyses, and the students for their enthusiastic participation and their teachers and principals who made their participation possible. Address correspondence to Irene-Anna N. Diakidoy, Department of Psychology, Uni- versity of Cyprus, P.O. Box 20537, Nicosia CY-1678, Cyprus. E-mail: eddiak@ucy.ac.cy 55