Assessing Listening
Assessing Listening
Assessing Listening
Introduction :
Observing the performance of the four skills 2. The importance of Listening 3. Basic types of Listening 4. Micro and Macro skills of Listening Designing assessment tasks : Intensive Listening Designing assessment tasks : Responsive Listening
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Practicality 2. Reliability 3. Validity 4. Authenticity Exam boards aim to make their listening material as authentic as possible, reflecting the different ways that the spoken language is normally used . ( Sally Burgess and Katie Head p.79, Longman book)
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- Performance
- Observation
Sometimes the performance does not indicate true competence : a bad nights rest, illness, an emotional distraction, test anxiety, a memory block, or other student-related reliability factor. One important principle for assessing a learners competence is to consider the fallibility of the results of a single performance such as that produced in a test.
It relates to Sally Burgess and Katie Head in their book, how to tech for exam, page on 81, that said. The listening tasks are designed to assess the candidates ability to process form of spoken English. A single test with multiple test tasks to account for learning styles and performance variables In-class and extra-class graded work Alternative forms of assessment ( e. g journal, portfolio, conference, observation, self assessment, peer assessment )
1. Receptive skills -- Listening performance The process of listening performance is about : Invisible, inaudible process of internalizing meaning form the auditory signals being transmitted to the ear and brain. The productive skills of speaking and writing allow us to hear and see the process as it is performance .-writing can give permanent product of written piece. But we have recorded speech, there is no permanent observable product for speaking.
counterpart of speaking. But its rare to find just a listening test. Listening is often implied as component of speaking. Oral production ability other than monologues, speeches, reading aloud and the like is only as good as ones listening comprehension. Input the aural-oral mode accounts for a large proportion of successful language acquisition.
tasks in listening begins with the specification of objectives, or criteria. The following processes flash through your brain : 1. recognize speech sounds and hold a temporary imprint of them in short-term memory.
(top-down) background schemata to bring a plausible interpretation to the message and assign a literal and intended meaning to the utterance. ( Jeremy Harmer, page on 305) said.. This study shows is that activating students schemata. 4. in most cases, delete the exact linguistic form in which the message was originally received in favor of conceptually retaining important or relevant information in long-term memory.
Teacher use audio material on tape or hard disk when they want their students to practice listening skills (Jeremy Harmer, the practice of English teaching, page on 304) 2. Responsive. 3. Selective. 4. Extensive. Extensive listening will usually take a place outside the classroom. Material for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of sources. ( Jeremy Harmer, the practice of English language teaching ,page on 303)
Microskills
Discriminate among sounds of English retain chunks of language of different lengths in shortterm memory Recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed/ unstressed position, rhythmic structure , intonation contours, and their role in signaling information Recognize reduce form of words. Distinguish word boundaries, recognize the core of a words and interpret word order patterns and their significance
Process speech at different rates of delivery Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections and other performance variables Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization), pattern, rules, and elliptical forms. Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents Recognize that particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical formed Recognize cohesive device in spoken discourse
recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, goals Infer situations, participants, goals using real-world knowledge From events, ideas, and so on, described, predict outcomes, infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification Distinguish between literal and implied meanings Use the facial, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher meanings Develop and uses a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words, guessing the meaning from context, appealing for help, and signaling comprehension or lack thereof
Clustering
Redundancy
Reduced forms Performance variables
Colloquial language
Rate of delivery Stress, rhythm, intonation
Interaction
Elements
Phonemic pair, consonants
Test-takers hear Test-takers read : : Hes from California A. Hes from California B. Shes from California
Test-takers read
Sentence Paraphrase
Test-takers hear Test-takers read : Hellow, my name is Keiko. I come from Japan : A. Keiko is comfortable in japan B. Keiko wants to come to Japan C. Keiko is Japanese D. Keiko likes Japan
Dialogue paraphrase
Test-takers hear : man : Hi, Maria, my name is George. woman : Nice to meet you, George. Are you American? man : no, Im Canadian : A. George lives in United States B. George is American C. George comes from Canada D. Maria is Canadian
Test-takers read
The test-taker listens to a limited quantity of aural input and must discern within it some specific information.
Flight seven-oh-six to portland will depart from gate seventy-three at nine-thirty P.M. Flight tenforty-five to Reno will depart at nine-fifty P.M from gate seventeen. Flight four-forty to Montery will depart at nine-thirty-five P.M from gate sixty. And flight sixteen-oh-three to Sacramento will depart from gate nineteen at ten-fifteen P.M.
tasks. Test-takers who are asked to listen to a story with periodic deletions in the written version may not need to listen at all, yet may still able to respond with the appropriate word or phrase.
May focus on . . . Grammatical category such as verb tenses, articles, two-word verbs, prepositions, or transition words/phrases.
information load that cannot be easily predicted simply by reading the passage. Focusing only on the creterion of numbers as you see on the example should be avoided. The deletions in the listening cloze are governed by the objective of the test, not by mathematical deletion of every nth word. Use an exact word method of scoring and consider other appropriate words as incorrect.
Information Transfer
Selective listening can also be assessed through an information trnasfer technique in which aurally processed must be trnasfered to a visual representation, such as labelling a diagram, identifying an element in a picture, completing a form, or showing routes on a map.
e.g. Multiple picture-cued selection Test-takers hear: The insrtuction : Choose the correct picture. And the describtion of a picture to be chosen. e.g.In my backyard I have a bird feeder. Yesterday, there were two birds and a squirrel fighting for the last few seeds in the bird feeder. The squirrel was on top of the bird feeder while the larger bird sat at the bottom of the feeder screeching at the squirrel. The smaller birds flying aroung the squirrel, trying to scare it away.
Test-talers will choose the correct picture.
Single-picture-cued verbal multiplication Test-takers hear: Test-takers see a (a) Shes speaking into a photograph of a woman micripone. in a laboratory setting, (b) Shes putting on her with no glasses on, glasses squinting through a (c) She has both eyes microscope with her open right eye, and with her (d) Shes using a left eye closed. micropone
Test-takers hear:
The instruction : Now you will hear information about Lucys daily schedule . . .
And the story about Lucy, . . .
retain a strecth of language long enough to reproduce it, and then must respond with an oral repetition of that stimulus.
recognition of sounds, and it can easily be contaminated by lack of short-term memory ability,thus invalidating it as an assessment of comprehension alone.
Dictation: Test-takers hear a passage, typically 50-100 words, recited three times; First reading, natural speed, no pauses, test-takers listen for gist. Second reading, slowed speed, pause at each break, test-takers write. Third reading, natural speed, test takers check their work.
Communicative Stimulus-Response Tasks The test-takers are presented with a stimulus monologue or conversation and then are asked to respond to a set of comprehension questions. First: Test-takers hear the insrtuction and dialogue or monologue. Second: Test-takers read the multiple-choice comprehension questions and items then chose the correct one.
Authentic Listening Tasks Buck (2001-p.92) stated Every test requires some components of communicative language ability, and no test covers them all. Similarly, with the notion of authenticity, every task shares some characteristics with target-language tasks, and no test is completely authentic
communicative context? Can we, at this end of the range of listening tasks, ascertain from test-takers that they have processed the main idea of a lecture, the gist of a story, the pragmatics of a conversation, or the unspoken inferential data present in most authentic aural input? Can we assess the test-takers comprehension of humor, idiom, and methaphor?
practicality.
A more certain yes IF we take the liberty of strecthing
the concept of assessment to extend beyond tests and into a broader framework of alternatives.
Note-taking
the subjectivity of the point system. The notes are arguably valid form of assessing global listening comprehension.
Editing
An authentic task provides both a written and a spoken stimulus, and requires the test-takers for discrepencies. How? Test-takers read: the written stimulus material(a news report, an email, etc) Test-takers hear: a spoken versionof the stimulus that deviates, in a finite number of facts or opinions, from the original written form. Test-takers mark: the written stimulus by circling any words, phrases, facts, or opinions that shows a descripencies between the two versions.
Interpretive tasks
To extend the stimulus material to a longer strecth of discourse and force the tes-takers to infer a response. Some potential stimuli include; song lyric, poetry and radio or TV news report. Test-takers are then directed to intepret the stimulus by answering a few questions in open-ended form. Retelling Tst-takers listen to a story ornews event and simply retell it, or summarize it, either orally, or in writing.