ASSESSING LISTENING
Before
focusing on listening itself, think about the two interacting concepts of
performance and observation. All language users perform the acts of listening.
Speaking, reading & writing. They of course rely on their underlying
competence in order to accomplish these performances. When you propose to asses
that person’s competence, but you observe the person’s performance.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING
Listening
has often played second fiddle to its counterpart, speaking in the standardized
testing industry, a number separate oral production test are available (Test of
spoken English, Oral proficiency inventory and phone pass. to name several that
are described chapter 7 of this book, but it is rare to find just a listening
test. on reason for this emphasis is that listening is often implied as a
component of speaking. in addition the overtly observable nature of speaking
renders it more empirically measurable than listening.
We
therefore need to pay close attention to listening as a mode of performance for
assessment in the classroom in this chapter we will begin with basic principals
and types listening, than move to a survey of task that can be used to assess
listening.
BASIC TYPES of LISTENING
As all
with effective test, designing appropriate assessment tasks in listening begins
wait the specification of objectives, or criteria those objective may be
classified in term of several types of listening performance.
1.
* You recognize speech sounds and hold a temporary “imprint” of
them in short term memory.
2. * You simultaneously
determine the type of speech event (monologue, interpersonal dialogue,
transactional dialogue) that is being processed and attend to its context (who
the speakers is location purpose)
3. * You use
(bottom up) listening decoding skill and /or (top-down) background schemata to
bring a plausible interpretation to the message and assign a literal and
intended meaning to the utterance.
4.
* In most cases (expect for repetition task, which involve
short-term memory only)
From
these stages we can derive four commonly identified types of listening
performance, each of which comprises a category within which to consider
assessment tasks and procedures.
1.
intensive
2.
Responsive
3.
selective
4.
extensive
INTENSIVE LISTENING
Once
you have determined objectives, your next step is to design the task including
making decisions about how you will elicit performance and how you will expect
the test-taker to respond. We will look at tasks that range from intensive
listening performance, such as minimal phonemic pair recognition to extensive
comprehension of language in communicative context. The focus in this section
is on the micro skill of intensive listening.
A
typical form of intensive listening at this level is the assessment of
recognizing of phonological and morphological elements of language. A classic
test task gives a spoken stimulus and asks test-takers to identify the stimulus
from two or more choices.
The
next step up on the scale of listening comprehension micro skills is words,
phrases and sentences which are frequently assessed by providing a stimulus
sentences and asking the test-taker to choose the correct paraphrase from a
number of choices.
RESPONSIVE LISTENING
A
question and answer format can provide some interactivity in these lower end
listening tasks. The test-taker’s response is the appropriate answer to a
question.
SELECTIVE LISTENING
A third type of listening
performance is selective listening in which the test-taker listens 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
Listening
cloze tasks (sometimes called cloze dictations or partial dictations) require
the test-taker to listen to a story, monologue, on conversation and
simultaneously read the written text in which selected words or phrases have
been deleted. Cloze procedure is most commonly associated with reading only
(see chapter 9). In its generic form, the test consists of a passage in which
every nth word (typically every seventh word) is deleted and the text-taker is
asked to supply an appropriate word. in a listening cloze task, test-taker see a
transcript of the passage that they are to listening to and fill in the blanks
with the words or phrases that they hear.
Selective
listening can also be assessed through an information transfer technique in
which aurally processed information must be transferred to a visual
representation, such as labeling a diagram, identifying an element in a
picture, completing a form, or showing routes on a map.
Sentence
repetition is far from a flawless listening assessment task. buck (2001 p. 79)
noted that that such tasks “are not just tests of listening, but tests of
general oral skills”. Further, this tasks may tests only recognition of sounds,
and it can easily be contaminated by lack of short-term memory ability, thus
invalidating it as an assessment toning comprehension error from an oral
production error. therefore, sentence repetition tasks should be used with
caution.
EXTENSIVE LISTENING
Drawing
a clear distinction between any two of the categories of listening referred to
hear is problematic, but perhaps the fuzziest division is between selective and
extensive listening. As we gradually move along the continuum from smaller to
larger stretches of language, and from micro- to macro skill of listening. the
probability of using more extensive listening task increases.
Dictation
is a widely researched genre of assessing listening comprehension. in a
dictation, test takers hear passage, typically of 50 to 100 word, recited three
times: first at normal speech; than, with long pauses between phrases or
natural word groups, during which time test takers write down what they have
just heard; and finally, at normal speech once more so they can check there
work and proofread.
Example
of extensive listening is found in a popular genre of assessment tasks in which
the task-takers is presented with a stimulus monologue or conversation and than
is asked to respond to a set of comprehension questions.
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