Listening Comprehension Skills and Vocabulary Knowledge Among elementary English as a Foreign Language Learners at a Public Institution in Espíndola

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension skills in elementary school students at a rural school in Espíndola, Ecuador. A quantitative approach was used, with a non-experimental, correlational design. The sample consisted of elementary school students, who were given two standardized tests: a vocabulary test that assessed form, meaning, and usage, and a listening comprehension test that measured auditory discrimination, interpretation of main ideas, and inference skills. The data were processed using descriptive statistics, the Shapiro-Wilk normality test, and Pearson's correlation coefficient. The results showed that students have a better command of perceptual skills such as auditory discrimination and the use of nonverbal cues than of global and inferential comprehension skills. It was also observed that complex aspects of vocabulary, especially collocations and the recognition of derived forms, represent the greatest difficulties. Finally, a positive correlation was identified between vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension, confirming that lexical development is a key component in strengthening oral comprehension in rural EFL contexts.