ASSESSING LISTENING

(MACRO & MICRO SKILLS)

(TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
METHODS)

OBSERVING THE PERFORMANCE OF FOUR SKILLS

1. two interacting concepts:
Performance
Observation
Sometimes the performance does not indicate true competence
a bad nights rest, illness, an emotional distraction, test anxiety, a
memory block, or other student-related reliability factor.
One important principle for assessing a learners competence is to
consider the fallibility of the results of a single performance such as
that produced in a test.
The form which involve performances and contexts in measurement
should design following:
Several tests that are combined t form an assessment.
The listening tasks are designed to assess the candidates ability to
process form of spoken English.
A single test with multiple test tasks to account for learning styles
and performance variables
In-class and extra-class graded work
Alternative forms of assessment ( e. g journal, portfolio, conference,
observation, self assessment, peer assessment )

Multiple measures give more reliable & valid assessment than a

single measure
We can observe neither the process of performing nor a product?
1. Receptive skills -- Listening performance
The process of listening performance is about :
Invisible, inaudible process of internalizing meaning form the
auditory signals being transmitted to the ear and brain.
2 The productive skills allow us to hear and see the process as it is
performance
writing can give permanent product of written piece.
But recorded speech, there is no permanent observable product for
speaking.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING
Listening has often played second fiddle to its counterpart of
speaking. But its rare to find just a listening test.
Listening is often implied as component of speaking.
Oral production ability other than monologues, speeches, reading
aloud and the like is only as good as ones listening comprehension.
Input the aural-oral mode accounts for a large proportion of
successful language acquisition.

BASIC TYPES OF LISTENING

For effective test, designing appropriate assessment tasks in
listening begins with the specification of objectives, or criteria.
The following processes flash through your brain :
1. recognize speech sounds and hold a temporary imprint
of them in short-term memory.
2. Simultaneously determine the

type of speech event.

3. 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. ( Jeremy Harmer, page on 305) said.. This study shows is
that activating students schemata.
4. in most cases, 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.

four commonly identified types of listening performances

1. Intensive.
Listening for perception of the components.
Teacher use audio material on tape or hard disk when they want their
students to practice listening skills
2. Responsive.
3. Selective.
4. Extensive.
Extensive listening will usually take a place outside the classroom.
Material for extensive listening can be obtained from a number of
sources.

Micro and Macro skills

Micro skills
Attending to smaller bits and chunks, in more of bottom-up
process
Discriminate among sounds of English
retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory
Recognize stress patterns, words in stressed/ unstressed position,
rhythmic structure , intonation contours, and their role in signaling
information
Recognize reduce form of words.
Distinguish word boundaries, recognize the core of a words and
interpret word order patterns and their significance
Process speech at different rates of delivery
Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, other
performance variables
Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.), systems
(e.g. tense, agreement, pluralization), pattern, rules, and elliptical
forms. sentence constituents and distinguish between major-minor
Detect
constituents
Recognize particular meaning may be expressed in different
grammatical form
Recognize cohesive device in spoken discourse

Macroskills

Focusing on larger elements involved in a topdown approach

recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to
situations, participants, goals
Infer situations, participants, goals using real-world knowledge
From events, ideas, and so on, described, predict outcomes, infer
links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects,
and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new
information, given information, generalization, and exemplification
Distinguish between literal and implied meanings
Use the facial, kinesics, body language, and other nonverbal clues to
decipher meanings
Develop and uses a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting
key words, guessing the meaning from context, appealing for help,
and signaling comprehension or lack thereof

What Makes Listening Difficult

1. Clustering
Chunking-phrases, clauses, constituents
2. Redundancy
Repetitions, Rephrasing, Elaborations and Insertions
3. Reduced Forms
Understanding reduced forms that may not be a part of learners
past experiences in classes where only formal textbook lang has
been presented
4. Performance variables
Hesitations, False starts, Corrections, Diversion
5 Colloquial Language
Idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared cultural knowledge
6. Rate of Delivery
Keeping up with speed of delivery, processing automatically as
speker continu
7. Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation:
Correctly understanding prosodic elements of spoken language,
which is more difficult than understanding the smaller phonological
bits and pieces.
8. Interaction:
Negotiation,clarification,attending signals,turn

Designing Assessment Tasks Intensive Listening

Recognizing Phonological and Morphological Elements

Phonemic pair, consonants
Test-takers hear

Hes from California

Test-takers read:
A. Hes from California
B. Shes from California

Phonemic pair, vowels

Test-takers hear

is he living?

Test-takers read:
A. is he leaving?
B. is he living?

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 cant

Test-takers hear

My girlfriend cant go to the party

Test-takers read:
A. My girlfriend can go to the party
B. My girlfriend cant 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
from Japan

: Hellow, my name is Keiko. I come

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 is

George.
woman
: Nice to meet you, George.
Are you
American?
man : no, Im Canadian
Test-takers read: A. George lives in United States
B. George is American
C. George comes from Canada
D. Maria is Canadian

Designing Assessment Tasks

Responsive

listening
Appropriate response to a question
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.

Open-ended response to a question

Test-takers hear
: how much time did you take to do
your
homework?
Test-takers write or speak :
__________________________________

Designing Assessment Tasks : Selective Listening

Test-taker listens a limited quantity of aural input and discern some specific
information
Listening Cloze (cloze dictations or Partial Dictation)
Listening cloze tasks require the test-taker to listen a story, monologue
or conversatation and simultaneously read written text in which selected
words or phrases have been deleted
One Potentional Weakness of listening cloze technique
They may be simply become reading comprehension tasks. Test-takers who
are asked to listen to a story with periodic deletions in the written version
may not need to listen at all, yet may still able to respond with the
appropriate word or phrase.
Information Transfer
aurally processed must be trnasfered to a visual representation, E.g labelling
a diagram, identifying an element in a picture, completing a form, or showing
routes on a map.
Chart Filling
Test-takers see the chart about Lucys daily schedule and fill in the schedule.
Sentence Repetition
The test-takers must retain a strecth of language long enough to reproduce
it, and then must respond with an oral repetition of that stimulus.

DESIGNING ASSESSMENT TASKS: EXTENSIVE LISTENING

Dictation: Test-takers hear a passage, typically 50-100 words,
recited 3 times;
First reading, natural speed, no pauses, test-takers listen for gist.
Second reading, slowed speed, pause at each break, test-takers
write.
Third reading, natural speed, test takers check their work.
Communicative Stimulus-Response Tasks
The test-takers are presented with a stimulus monologue or
conversation and then are asked to respond to a set of
comprehension questions.
First: Test-takers hear the insrtuction and dialogue or monologue.
Second: Test-takers read the multiple-choice comprehension
questions and items then chose the correct one
Authentic Listening Tasks
Buck (2001-p.92)Every test requires some components of
communicative language ability, and no test covers them all.
Similarly, every task shares some characteristics with targetlanguage tasks, and no test is completely authentic

Alternatives to

assess comprehension in a truly communicative

Note taking

context

Listening to a lecturer and write down the important ideas.

Disadvantage: scoring is time consuming

Advantages: mirror real classroom situation it fulfills the criteria

of cognitive demand, communicative language & authenticity

Editing
Editing a written stimulus of an aural stimulus
Interpretive tasks:

paraphrasing a story or conversation

Potential stimuli include: song lyrics, poetry, radio, TV, news reports,
etc.
Retelling
Listen story &simply retell it either orally or written show full
comprehension
Difficulties: scoring and reliability
validity, cognitive, communicative ability, authenticity are well
incorporated into the task.
Interactive listening (face to face conversations)