ASSESSMENT OF LISTENING

Micro-skills for Listening• discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English • retain chunks of language in short-term memory • recognize English stress patterns, rhythm, intonation

ASSESSMENT OF LISTENING

Helen Huntley Senior English Language Fellow

MOET, Hanoi, Vietnam

The Reading/Listening

Connection

different from the assessment of reading??

Micro-skills for Listening

• discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English

• retain chunks of language in short-term memory

• recognize English stress patterns, rhythm, intonation

• recognize reduced forms of words

• distinguish word boundaries

• interpret word order patterns

• process speech at different rates of delivery

• process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections

• recognize grammatical word forms, patterns, rules

• recognize cohesive devices

• recognize meaning expressed through different

grammatical patterns

Macro-skills for Listening

• recognize the communicative function of

utterances

• identify main ideas from supporting details

• make inferences using real-world knowledge

• predict outcomes and infer connections

• distinguish between literal and implied

meanings

• use non-verbal clues to assist comprehension

• use listening strategies (guessing vocabulary, signaling comprehension etc.)

Listening Assessment Tips

• Make sure students have enough contextualization to understand the listening text

• Provide a communicative purpose for the listening

• Focus on assessing the listening skills, not spelling, grammar etc

• Include both detail questions and meaning questions

• Don’t expect full comprehension

• Consider integrating skills in the types of questions:

discrimination of phonemes, paraphrase recognition, short

answers, cloze, dictation, information transfer tasks, note-taking

Test Content

Test specifications for Listening might include the following:

• Text types (narrative, descriptive etc.)

• Speech types (dialogues, monologues)

• Mode of listening: audio, video, reader

• Varieties of English

• Scripted or unscripted

• Length of listening, number of exchanges in dialogues

Paraphrase Recognition

Steven nailed his presentation this

morning.

a. Steven used nails at work today.

b. Steven’s presentation was very

successful.

c. Steven injured himself after his

presentation today.

Objective Format #1

The newly-weds took a much-needed break at a resort last weekend.

True/False

The couple got married last weekend.

Objective Format #2

What would you like to do next weekend?

A. Yes, I would.

B. B Just relax.

C. About two days.

D. In five minutes.

Short-Answer Questions

Two years ago I spent a week hiking in

Colorado It was one of the most energetic vacations I’ve ever had Every day, we

walked for five hours, then we set up camp

At the campsite, we read for a few hours,

then made dinner over a campfire

How many hours a day did he walk? _ What did he do before dinner? _

Listening Cloze

Two years ago I _ a week hiking in Colorado It was _ of the most

energetic _ I’ve ever had Every

day, we walked for _ hours, then

we set _ camp At the campsite,

we read for a _ hours, then _ dinner over a campfire.

4/5 connected words; read at a slower speed

Information Transfer

Flight # Leaves

Hanoi Arrives in Bangkok

180 6:13 a.m.

713 10:14 a.m.

Flight # Leaves

Hanoi Arrives in Bangkok

590 1:50 p.m.

918 9:40 a.m.

Listening Tasks for Testing

Understanding

Read through the different types of

activities for Listening assessment in your handout Discuss with a partner.

Which activities have you used in your classes or for tests?

Which activities do you want to try out?

ASSESS THE LISTENING TEST

Assess the Listening test in your handout.

• What are the strengths of this test?

• What are the weaknesses?

• How would you design a test using this listening script?