Testing Listening

1. Testing Listening By: Nane Magdalena 06920090052

2. Introduction • Listening and Speaking are typically exercised together in oral interaction. • Several occasions: listening to the radio, to lectures, to railway station announcement. NO speaking is called for. • Listening is included for its backwash effect on the development of oral skills. • Listening may also be tested for diagnostic purposes

3. Specifying what candidate should be able to… • Content • Operations…global classification, include the ability to: • Obtain the gist • Follow an argument • Recognize the attitude of the speaker • Informational (list on page 161) • Interactional • For lower level listening skills, might include • Discriminate between vowel and consonant phonemes • Interpret intonation patterns

4. Specifying what candidate should be able to… For reasons of content validity and backwash, text should be specified as fully as possible. • Text type..monologue, dialogue, instructions, etc. • Text form..exposition, argumentation, narration, etc. • Length..seconds or minutes. • Speed of speech..words/minute, syllable/second • Dialects..standard or non-standard varieties • Accents..regional or non-regional

5. Setting Criteria Levels of Performance • Selecting samples of speech (texts) • Use the authentic speech • Radio, television, teaching materials, internet, our own recordings of native speakers. • Poor recording introduces difficulties and reduces validity and reliability of the test. • Should be as natural as possible. • Should avoid passages originally intended for reading.

6. Setting Criteria Levels of Performance • Writing Items • Note-taking procedure for extended listening. • Keep items sufficiently far apart in the passage. • Candidates should be warned by key words that appear both in the item and passage.

7. Possible Techniques • Multiple choice • The alternatives must be kept short and simple • For testing recognizing and understanding suggestions • Short Answer • Gap filling • To avoid unique answer • Information Transfer (on page 166) • Completing forms, showing routes on a map, diagrams • Note-Taking

8. Possible Techniques • Partial Dictation (on page 168) • Providing a ‘rough and ready’ measure of listening ability • Can be used diagnostically to test students’ ability to cope with particular difficulties • To avoid score unreliability, it is better to use partial dictation • Correct spelling should probably not be required, but can cause scoring problems • If the answer is more than a single word, it does make the scoring even less straightforward

9. Possible Techniques • Transcription • To transcribe numbers or words which spelled letter by letter • The letters should not already be able to spell

10. Setting Criteria Levels of Performance • Moderating the items • the moderation of listening items is essential • The moderators begin by ‘taking the test and then analyze their items and their reactions to them (on page 154) • Presenting the texts (live or recorded?) • Use recordings  uniformity, listened to in language lab, the recording should be equally clear • To be live  a single speaker to get uniformity and reliability, should have a good command of the language of the test, highly reliable, trustworthy individuals • Scoring  the correct response was intended

11. THANK YOU….