Assessing Listening Problems of Lang Assessment A problem

Assessing Listening

Problems of Lang. Assessment A problem: performance = competence? l In language assessment we intend to assess a person’s competence or language ability, but we do it through observing the person’s performance. - teachers triangulate the measurements (multiple measures will give you a more reliable and valid assessment) - rely as much as possible on observable performance in assessments of students. l Also taking into account learners’ multi-intelligence l Important to have multiple measures l

Observable performance l Can the four skills be directly observed? 118) ¡ Listening ¡ Speaking ¡ Reading ¡ Writing l All assessment of receptive performance must be made by inference. (Brown

Purposes l What is included in listening comprehension? 121) ¡ ¡ l Micro-skills of listening (bottom-up) Macro-skills off listening (top-down) What do we listen for in real life? ¡ ¡ Communication of meaning Exchange of facts, ideas Debates, discussion Interpreting speaker’s intentions (Brown

Micro- and Macro- skills of listening l Microskills ¡ ¡ ¡ l Interpretation of intonation patterns Used in linguistic decoding skills A bottom-up process Macroskills ¡ ¡ ¡ Listening for specific information Following direction Following instruction A top-down process (Brown, p. 121)

What makes listening difficult? l l l l Clustering Redundancy Reduced forms Performance variables Colloquial language Rate of delivery Stress, rhythm, and intonation Interaction

Four Types of Listening Tasks (Brown 120) I. Intensive - Phonological/morphological elements - paraphrase II. Responsive (TOEFL – short conversation) III. Selective (TOEFL – short monologues; listening for names, numbers, a grammatical category, directions, or certain facts and events. ) IV. Extensive (TOEFL – lecture; listening for the gist, for the main idea and making inference)

I. Intensive listening – recognizing phonological and morphological elements Phonemic pair Q: He’s from California. (a) He’s from California. (b) She’s from California. 2. Morphological pair Q: I missed you very much. (a) I missed you very much. (b) I miss you very much. 1.

I. Intensive listening – paraphrase recognition 1. Q: Hello, 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.

II. Responsive listening – question-and-answer format 1. Q: How much time did you take to do your homework? (a) In about an hour (b) About an hour (c) About $10 (d) Yes, I did

III. Selective listening – 1. Listening Cloze p. 126 e. g. www. esl-lab. com 2. Information Transfer p. 127 l Multiple-picture-cued selection

IV. Extensive listening – 1. Sentence Repetition p. 131 - hear a passage 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, testtakers check their work)

III. Extensive listening – 2. Communicative Stimulus-Response Task 1. Monologues, lectures, and brief conversations p. 133 (multiple-choice question)

At the extensive level 1. Authentic listening task p. 136 Note-taking 2. Editing 3. Interpretive tasks. e. g. TOEFL – IBT http: //www. free-english. com/TOEFL-i. BT-practicetest. aspx#listening 1.

Dictation l Factors to determine level of difficulty ¡ The speed and clarity with which the text is read ¡ The complexity of, and the learners’ familiarity with, the syntactic structures in the passage ¡ Vocabulary, topic, discourse genre ¡ The lengths of the bursts and the pauses between bursts (the length of the word groups) (Bailey 14)

Recording or Live Presentations l Using recordings when administering a listening test. l The greatest uniformity will be achieved if presentations are to be live.

Auditory Discrimination l Reasons against auditory discrimination ¡ Phoneme discrimination even difficult for NSs Different dialects l Many Eng. dialects fail to make some vowel and consonant contrasts l ¡ Ability to distinguish between phonemes vs. ability to understand verbal messages ¡ Occasional confusion over selected pairs of phonemes doesn’t matter much. l In real life situations, listener has contextual clues

Issues of Concern l What do you really want the testees to demonstrate in the listening test? ¡ Ability to discriminate phonemes? ¡ Ability to recognize stress/intonation patterns ¡ Structural understanding? ¡ Comprehension of continuous speech in an authentic context? ¡ Ability to handle academic lectures?