Assessing Listening

ASSESSING LISTENING

PRESENTED BY:

ISNA RAKHMAWATI

MAXIMUS LEONARDUS NEMO

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ELTSTATE UNIVERSITY OF MALANG

DEFINITION

• THE NATURE OF LISTENING ( FANG: 2008) MEANS THAT THE LEARNER SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED

TO CONCENTRATE ON AN ACTIVE PROCESS OF LISTENING FOR MEANINGS, USING NOT ONLY THE

LINGUISTICS CUES, BUT HIS NON LINGUISTIC KNOWLEDGE AS WELL.

• IN THE MODERN VIEW OF LISTENING, O’MALLEY AND CHAMOT (1989) DEFINES THAT LISTENING

COMPREHENSION IS ACTUAL AND COUSCIOUS PROCESS IN WHICH THE LISTENER CONSTRUCTS

MEANING BY USING CUES FROM CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION AND EXISTING KNOWLEDGE

WHILE RELYING UPON MULTIPLE STRATEGIC RESOURCES TO FULFILL THE TASK REQUIREMENT.

LANGUAGE SKILLS1. Listening

2. Speaking

3. Reading

4. Listenig

LISTENING IS RECEPTIVE SKILLS

a. PASSIVE

b. ACTIVE

THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

(1) often implied as a component of speaking,

(2) input in the successful of language acquisition,

(3) applicable in many fields: workplace, education, home-context.

Assessment of listening must be made because we neither observe the

actual act of listening nor the product

LISTENING

• Listening is receptive skills

• The importance of listening: (1) often implied as a

component of speaking, (2) input in the successful of

language acquisition, (3) applicable in many fields:

workplace, education, home-context.

•Assessment of listening must be made because we neither

observe the actual act of listening nor the product

WHAT MAKES LISTENING IS SO DIFFICULT?

• Clustering:

• Redundancy

• Reduced forms

• Performance variables

• Colloquial language

• Rate of delivery

• Stress, rhythm, and intonation

• Interaction

BASIC TYPES OF LISTENING

• Heaton (1988) argued that developing listening skills can be done

through testing listening comprehension test.

• He, therefore, listed the two categories of auditory test:

1) Test of phoneme discrimination and of sensitivity to stress and

intonation

2) Test of listening comprehension

• Brown (2004) stated that effective test or appropriate assessment

designing must begun with the specification of objectives or criteria

which can be classified on several types of listening performance.

comprehending language

structure elements

understanding pragmatic

context

determining meaning of

auditory input

developing the gist, a

global/comprehensive

understanding

Intensive

Responsive

Selective

Extensive

MA

CR

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THE PERFORMANCE OF LISTENING

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CR

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• Phonological and morphological elements recognition

• Paraphrase recognition

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: INTENSIVE LISTENING

PHONOLOGICAL & MORPHOLOGICAL ELEMENTS

RECOGNITION

Phonemic pair, consonant

Test-takers hear: He’s from California.

Test-takers read: (a) He’s from California.

(b) She’s from California.

Phonemic pair, vowels

Test-takers hear: Is he living?

Test-takers read: (a) Is he leaving?

(b) Is he living?

Phoneme discrimination, pictures

Test-takers see the pictures

Test-takers hear:

(a) pin (b) pen (c) pair (d) pain

(a) shark (b) shock (c) sack (d) shock

(a) thin (b) tin (c) fin (d) din

Test-takers see the pictures

Test-takers hear:

1. Pain – pain

2. Sock – sock

Morphological pair, -ed ending

Test-takers hear: I missed you very much.

Test-takers read: (a) I missed you very much.

(b) I miss you very much.

Stress pattern in can’t

Test-takers hear: My girlfriend can’t go to the party.

Test-takers read: (a) My girlfriend can’t go to the party.

(b) My girlfriend can go to the party.

One-word stimulus

Test-takers hear: vine

Test-takers read: (a) vine

(b) wine

PARAPHRASE RECOGNITION

Sentence paraphrase

Test-takers hear: Hello, my name’s Keiko. I come from Japan.

Test-takers read: (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’s George.

Women: Nice to meet you, George. Are you American?

Man : No, I’m Candian.

Test-takers read: (a) George lives in the United States.

(b) George is American.

(c) George comes from Canada.

(d) Maria is Canadian.

• Appropriate response to question

• Open-ended response to a question

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: RESPONSIVE LISTENING

APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS

Test-takers hear: How much time did you take to do your homework?

Test-takers read: (a) in about an hour.

(b) about an hour.

(c) about $10.

(d) Yes, I did.

Test-takers hear: Does Allison mind you playing the piano?

Test-takers read: (a) yes, she’s always thinking about it.

(b) no, she rather likes it.

(c) no, she doesn’t play the piano.

(d) yes, she must be careful.

OPEN-ENDED RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS

Test-takers hear: How much time did you take to do your homework?

Test-takers write/ speak:_______________________.

• Listening cloze

• Information transfer

• Sentence repetition

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: SELECTIVE LISTENING

LISTENING CLOZE

Test-takers hear:

Ladies and gentlemen, I now have some connecting gate information for those of you making

connections to other flights out of San Francisco.

Flight seven-oh-six to Portland will depart from gate seventy-three at nine-thirty P.M

Flight ten-forty-five to Reno will depart at nine-fifty P.M. from gate seventeen.

Flight four-forty to Monterey 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 .

Test-takers write the missing words or phrases in the blanks.

INFORMATION TRANSFER

Multiple-picture-cued selection

Based on the picture below, the test takers have to pick out the true spoken statement and write

T at the side of the appropriate numbers. Then, write F at the side of the numbers of the false

statements.

Test takers hear:

1. The lorry’s on the left of the motorcyclist. ( )

2. The car’s travelling in the same direction. ( )

3. A dog’s running in front of the car. ( )

In the following listening tests students the test takers have five pictures in front of them. They

listen to four sentences, at the end of which they are required to select the appropriate picture

being described.

The test takers hear:

Both car doors are open.

It’s daylight but both headlamps are on.

The man who’s repairing the car is lying underneath it.

Although the girl sees the man working hard, she doesn’t help him.

Thus the test takers are able to narrow down the choice available to them as follows:

1. B C D E (only A shows one door open)

2. B D E (only C shows the headlamps off)

3. B D ( only E shows the man standing up)

4. D ( only B shows the girl helping the man)

Single-picture-cued verbal multiple-choice

Test-takers see: a photograph of a woman in a laboratory setting, with no glasses on, squinting

through a microscope with her right eye, and with her left eye closed.

Test-takers here: (a) She’s speaking into a microphone.

(b) She’s putting on her glasses.

(c) She has both eyes open.

(d) She’s using a microscope.

Chart-filling

Test-takers hear:

Now you will hear information about Lucy’s daily schedule. The information will be given twice.

The first time just listen carefully. The second time, there will be a pause after each sentence.

Fill in Lucy’s blank daily schedule with the correct information. The example has already been

filled in.

You will hear: Lucy gets up at eight o’clock every morning except on weekends.

You will fill in the schedule to provide the information.

Now listen to the information about Lucy’s schedule. Remember, you will first hear all the

sentences; then you will hear each sentence separately with time to fill in your chart.

Lucy gets up at eight o’clock every morning except on weekends. She has English on Monday,

Wednesday and Friday at ten o’clock. She has History on Tuesdays and Thursdays at two o’clock.

She takes Chemistry on Monday from two o’clock to six o’clock. She plays tennis on weekends at

four o’clock. She eats lunch at twelve o’clock every day except Saturday and Sunday.

Now listen a second time. There will be a pause after each sentence to give you time to fill in the

chart.

• Dictation

• Communicative stimulus-response tasks

• Authentic listening tasks

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: EXTENSIVE LISTENING

DICTATION

COMMUNICATIVE STIMULUS-RESPONSE TASKS

Dialogue and multiple choice comprehension items

The test takers read:

1. What is Lynn’s problem?

(a) She feels horrible.

(b) She ran too fast at the lake.

(c) She’s been drinking too many hot beverages.

2. When did Lynn’s problem start?

(a) When she saw her doctor.

(b) Before she went to the lake.

(c) After she came home from the lake.

AUTHENTIC LISTENING TASKS

a,. Note-taking

This is usually done by the students of non-native English users while listening to the classroom

lecturers by professors. Their notes will be evaluated in such a way so that it lacks some

reliability.

b. Editing

d. Interpretive tasks

The tasks extend the stimulus material to a longer stretch of discourse and forces the test-

takers to infer a response by answering a few questions in the open-ended form. The potential

stimuli can be used are song lyrics, poetry (recite), radio/ tv news reports and oral account of

experience.

e. Retelling

The test takers listen to a story or news event and simply retell it or summarize orally or written.

In order to show a full comprehension, the test takers require to identify the main idea, purpose

and supporting details.

REFERENCES

• Brown, H.D. 2004. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom

Practices. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

• Fang, x. 2008. Listening Comprehension in EFL Teaching. Us-china foreign

language. 6 (52): 21-31.

• Heaton, J.B. 1988. Writing English Language Tests (new edition). London:

Longman.

• O’malley, J.M. & Chamot, A.U. 1989. Listening Comprehension Strategies

in Second Language Acquisition. Applied linguistics. 10 (4): 418-437.