Listening Comprehension Assessment
Dyussebayeva Aigerim
Introduction
Being able to listen well is an important part of communication for everyone. For our students, guided practice by a teacher is one of the best ways to improve this skill. A student with good listening comprehension skills will be able to participate more effectively in communicative situations. What follows is an exploration of areas that language teachers may find useful in their classroom and when preparing listening materials.
Teaching the skill of listening cannot be emphasized enough in a communicative classroom. For second language learners, developing the skill of listening comprehension is extremely important. Students with good listening comprehension skills are better able to participate effectively in class (Brown, 2001).
Listening: The ability to identify and understand what others are saying
Listeners are capable of simultaneously understanding a speaker’s
Accent
Pronunciation
Grammar
Vocabulary
Meaning
Although hearing is a natural process, listening is not. Learning effective listening skills is crucial in order to get the most out of each message.
All assessment of listening and reading must be made on the basis of observing the test takers’ speaking or writing (or non-verbal behavior) and not on the listening or reading itself. So, all assessment of receptive performances must be made by inference.
Testing reading and listening skills
Both listening and reading are receptive skills, but listening can be more difficult than reading because:
Different speakers produce the same sounds in different ways, e.g. dialects and accents, stress, rhythm, intonation, etc.;
The listener has little/no control over the speed of talk;
The spoken material is often heard only once (unlike the reading material);
Testing listening skills
The listener cannot pause to work out the meaning;
Speech is more likely to be distorted by background noise (e.g. around the classroom) or the media that transmit sounds;
The listener sometimes has to deal simultaneously with another task while listening, e.g. note-taking, etc.
Sources of difficulty for learners
Unfamiliar vocabulary
Grammar
Text too long
Several people talking
Unfamiliar Context
Lots of details
Topic not interesting
Theme not clear
Accent
Speed
Idiomatic speech
Task too difficult
Not prepared for the format
A lack of background information
Types of listening text
Formal lectures
Causal chats
Face-to-face interactions
Telephone messages
Radio and TV presentations
Native Speakers’ speech in all kinds of situations
loudspeaker announcements, telephone conversations, radio news, interview, lesson, lecture, story-telling, shopping conversation, gossip, instructions, meetings, watching television, negotiations, watching movies, theatre show
Basic stages of Listening (Brown 2004, 188-119)
(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 speaker is, location, purpose) and the content of the message.
3) You use (bottom-up) linguistic decoding skills 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 (except for repetition tasks, which involve short-term memory only), you 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.
Each of these stages represents a potential assessment objective (Brown 2004, 188-119)
Assessment Objectives
Potential Assessment Objectives:
(1) comprehending of surface structure elements such as phonemes, words, intonation, or a grammatical category
(2) understanding of pragmatic context
(3) determining meaning of auditory input, and
(4) developing the gist, a global or comprehensive understanding
Assessment Tasks and Procedures
Types of Listening Performances
(1) Listening for perception of the components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of a larger stretch of language.
(2) Listening to a relatively short stretch of language (a greeting, question, command, comprehension check, etc.) in order to make an equally short response.
3.Processing stretches of discourse such as short monologues for several minutes in order to “scan” for certain information. The purpose of such performance is not necessarily to look for global or general meanings, but to be able to comprehend designated information in a context of longer stretches of spoken language (such as classroom directions from a teacher, TV or radio news items, or stories).
Assessment tasks in this type of listening could ask students, for example, to listen for names, numbers, a grammatical category, directions (in a map exercise), or certain facts and events.
Listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken language. This kind of listening performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures to listening to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose. Listening for the gist, for the main idea, and making inferences are all part of extensive listening.
Listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken language. This kind of listening performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures to listening to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose. Listening for the gist, for the main idea, and making inferences are all part of extensive listening.
Responsive listening testing has a question-and-answer format. The test-taker is required to find the appropriate response. The test has a multiple-choice format (with answers that seemingly have similar meanings) or requires a more open-ended framework.
Implies listening to a text with the purpose of scanning for certain details or information
Extended listening involves the comprehension and reproduction in writing of a moderately large spoken passage (dictation), generally of about 50 to 100 words. A variant of this test is answering comprehension questions after listening to the passage several times.
Validity in listening assessment
measure comprehension (not hearing, spelling, prior knowledge of a topic or reading long multiple choice questions)
Base assessment on the learning objectives and listening tasks of the unit/course
Reliability in listening assessment
Minimize anxiety
Ensure all learners can hear/see the
text/video equally and that there are no
distracting noises
Avoid ambiguous or ‘trick’ test items Ensure more than one scorer for correcting open-ended test items
Authenticity in listening assessment
Use texts with authentic, real-life speech
Avoid using texts that are dense and cognitively demanding (meant to be read and not listened to)
Choose comprehension tasks that reflect real-life purposes for listening
Avoid difficult accents and dialects
Steps in designing listening tests
Identify the purpose of the listening test, keeping in mind learner goals. The listening test should reflect what students are learning and what they need.
Decide on the format for test items and create the test form.
Create or secure listening passages to be used in the test. Many commercial programs come with audio files. For authentic materials, you could record a radio segment or take advantage of listening materials available on the Internet. Universities and professional language organizations often have recorded language samples on their websites.
Steps in designing listening tests
Be sure that instructions are clear. Do not risk letting students' misunderstanding of test directions get in the way of assessing listening skill.
Ensure optimal listening comprehension by framing the task to activate background information that will aid in comprehension. For example, you could introduce a listening segment by saying, "In the passage you will hear, two friends are having a conversation in a train station." Give step-by-step instructions for more complex listening tasks
Steps in designing listening tests
Determine scoring criteria. Scoring true/false or multiple choice items is uncomplicated, but asking students to take notes on a passage or write a summary presents challenges.
Activity types for testing listening comprehension
Information transfer
(drawing a route on a sketch/map, labelling diagrams/pictures, completing a form/a table)
“Picture dictation”
An incomplete picture
Or a blank page (students listen to the description and draw the picture)
Example:
a. The listeners listen and fill in details on the picture.
b. The learners listen and label parts of a picture or diagram.
Types of listening test items
Oral cloze
Picture ordering
What is it?
Example: I forgot it when I left home this morning. This made me angry because it is useful. I don’t like it very much but I need it. Not every person has one, but I think most people do. Some people like to look at it and now many people play with it. Mine is quite heavy….
References
1.Brown, D. (2001). Teaching by principle–an interactive approach to language pedagogy. Addison Wesley Longman: New York.
2.Mangubhai, F. (2002). Methodology in teaching a second language–study book. University of Southern Queensland: Toowoomba.
