Assessing Listening
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Transcript of Assessing Listening
Observing the Performance of the Four Skills
Things that we can observe during listening as the receptive skills are process and product (invisible, audible)
The Importance of Listening
Listening is often implied as a component of speaking
Types of Listening
Intensive: phonemes, words, intonationResponsive: a greeting, command, questionSelective: TV , radio news items, storiesExtensive: listening for the gist, the main idea, making inference
Micro and Macro Skills of Listening
Micro SkillsAttending to the smaller bits and chunks of language, in more of bottom-up process
Macro SkillsFocusing on the larger elements involved in a top-down approach
What Makes Listening Difficult
1. Clustering Chunking-phrases, clauses,
constituents2. Redundancy Repetitions, Rephrasing,
Elaborations and Insertions
3. Reduced Forms Understanding the reduced forms that
may not have been a part of English learner’s
past experiences in classes where only
formal ”textbook” language has been presented
4. Performance variablesHesitations, False starts, Corrections, Diversion
5. Colloquial Language Idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared cultural knowledge
6. Rate of Delivery Keeping up with the speed of delivery, processing automatically as the speaker continues
7. Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation:Correctly understanding prosodic elements of spoken language, which is almost always much more difficult than understanding the smaller phonological bits and pieces.
8. Interaction:Negotiation, clarification, attending signals, turn taking, maintenance, termination
Designing Assessment Tasks : Intensive Listening
1. Recognizing Phonological & Morphological Elementsa. Phonemics pair, consonants
Test-takers read : a. He’s from California b. She’s from California
b. Phonemics pair, vowels
c. Morphological pair, -ed ending
Test-takers read : a. Is he leaving ? b. Is he living?
Test-takers read : a. I missed you very much b. I miss you very much
d. Stress Pattern in can’t
e. One-word stimulus
Test-takers read : a. My girlfriend can’t go to the party b. My girlfriend can go to the party
Test-takers read : a. vine b. wine
2. Paraphrase Recognitiona. Sentence paraphrase
Test-takers read : a. Keiko is comfortable in Japan b. Keiko wants to come to Japan
c. Keiko is Japanese d. Keiko likes Japan
b. Dialogue paraphrase
Test-takers read : a. Tracy lives in the United States
b. Tracy is American c. Tracy comes from Canada d. Maria is Canadian
Designing Assessment Tasks : Responsive Listening
1. Appropriate response to a question
Test-takers read : a. In about an hour. b. About an hour
c. About $10 d. Yes, I did
2. Open-ended response to a question
Test-takers read write or speak :_______________
Designing Assessment Tasks: Selective Listening
Selective listening, in which the test-taker listen to a limited quantity of aural input and must discern within it some specific information
A number of techniques have been used that require selective
listening. Listening Cloze
Information TransferSentence Repetition
Listening Cloze(cloze dictations or partial
dictations) It requires the test-taker to listen a story monologue, or conversation and simultaneously read the written text in which selected words or phrases have been selectedIn a listening cloze task, test-takers see a transcript of the passage that they are listening to and fill in the blanks with the words or phrases that they hear
Test-takers write the missing words or phrases in the blanks
Flight to Portland will depart from gate at P.M
Flight to Reno will depart at P.M from gate seventeen
Information Transfer
Information transfer: multiple-picture-cued-selection
Information transfer: single-picture-cued-verbal-multiple-choice
Information transfer: chart-filling
Information transfer: multiple-picture-cued-selection
Information transfer: single-picture-cued-verbal-multiple-
choice
Information transfer: chart-filling
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Weekends
8:00 get up get up get up get up get up
10:00
12:00
2:00
4:00
6:00
Sentence Repetition
The task of simply repeating a sentence or a partial sentence, or sentence repetition, is also used as an assessment of listening comprehension
Designing assessment Test: Extensive Listening
Listening to develop a top down, global understanding of spoken language
Some extensive / quasi-extensive listening
comprehension tasks
1. Dictation: widely researched genre of assessing listening comprehension> 50 – 100 words> recited 3 times: normal speed, long pauses between phrases, normal speed
Difficulty can be manipulated by:
The length of the word groupThe length of pausesThe speedComplexity of the discourse, grammar and
vocabularyScoring (spelling, grammatical, additional words, replacement)
Dictation is a practical valid method for integrating listening and writing skills, but the authenticity is questioned.
2. Communicative stimulus-response tasks
Listen to a monologue or conversation and respond to a set of comprehension questions.Disadvantages: some of the multiple-choice questions don’t mirror communicative real-life situations.The conversation is authentic, but listening to a conversation between a doctor and a patient is rarely done (p.133)
3. Authentic listening tasks
Ideally, listening tests are cognitively demanding, communicative, authentic, and interaction.Test as a sample of performance/tasks implies an equally limited capacity to mirror all the real-world context of listening performance
Buck (2001: p. 92) p.136
“Every test requires some components of communicative language ability, and no test covers them all”
Alternatives to assess comprehension in a truly communicative context
Note takingListening to a lecturer and write down the important ideas.Disadvantage: scoring is time consumingAdvantages: mirror real classroom situation it fulfills the criteria of cognitive demand, communicative language & authenticity
EditingEditing a written stimulus of an aural stimulus
Test-takers read : the written stimulus materialTest-takers hear: a spoken version of the stimulusTest-takers mark: the written stimulus by circling any words
Interpretive tasks:paraphrasing a story or conversation
Potential stimuli include: song lyrics, poetry, radio, TV, news reports, etc.
The stimuli can be directed through questions like: “why was the singer feeling sad?”, “what do you think the political activists might do next?”Difficulties: The task conforms to certain time limitation, and the questions might be quite specific, there may be more than one correct interpretation (scoring)
RetellingListen to a story or news event and simply retell it either orally or written show full comprehension
Difficulties: scoring and reliabilityvalidity, cognitive, communicative ability, authenticity are well incorporated into the task.
Interactive listening (face to face conversations)