ASSESSING LISTENING
OBSERVING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE FOUR SKILL
Before focusing on listening itself, think about the two
interacting concepts of performance and observation. All language users perform
the acts of listening. Speaking, reading & writing. They of course rely on
their underlying competence in order to accomplish these performances. When you
propose to asses that person’s competence, but you observe the person’s
performance.
Listening has often played second fiddle to its counterpart,
speaking in the standardized testing industry, a number separate oral
production test are available (Test of spoken English, Oral proficiency
inventory and phone pass. to name several that are described chapter 7 of this
book, but it is rare to find just a listening test. on reason for this emphasis
is that listening is often implied as a component of speaking. in addition the
overtly observable nature of speaking renders it more empirically measurable than
listening.
We therefore need to pay close attention to listening as a
mode of performance for assessment in the classroom in this chapter we will
begin with basic principals and types listening, than move to a survey of task
that can be used to assess listening.
BASIC TYPES of LISTENING
Ass all with effective test, designing appropriate
assessment tasks in listening begins wait the specification of objectives, or
criteria those objective may be classified in term of several types of
listening performance.
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 speakers is location purpose)
3. You use (bottom up) listening decoding skill 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 (expect for repetition task, which involve
short-term memory only)
Each of these stages represents a potential assessment
objective:
Comprehending of surface structure elements such as
phonemes word intonation, or a grammatical category
understanding of pragmatic context
determining meaning of auditory input
developing the gist, a global or comprehensive
understanding
From these stages we can derive four commonly identified
types of listening performance, each of which comprises a category within which
to consider assessment tasks and procedures.
1. intensive
2. Responsive
3. selective
4. extensive
INTENSIVE LISTENING
Once you have determined objectives, your next step is to
design the task including making decisions about how you will elicit
performance and how you will expect the test-taker to respond. We will look at
tasks that range from intensive listening performance, such as minimal phonemic
pair recognition to extensive comprehension of language in communicative context.
The focus in this section is on the micro skill of intensive listening.
Recognizing Phonological and Morphological Elements
A typical form of intensive listening at this level is the
assessment of recognizing of phonological and morphological elements of
language. A classic test task gives a spoken stimulus and asks test-takers to
identify the stimulus from two or more choices.
PARAPHRASE RECOGNITION
The next step up on the scale of listening comprehension
micro skills is words, phrases and sentences which are frequently assessed by
providing a stimulus sentences and asking the test-taker to choose the correct
paraphrase from a number of choices.
RESPONSIVE LISTENING
A question and answer format can provide some interactivity
in these lower end listening tasks. The test-taker’s response is the
appropriate answer to a question.
SELECTIVE LISTENING
A third type of listening performance is selective listening
in which the test-taker listens to a limited quantity of aural input and must
discern within it some specific information. A number of techniques have been
used that require selective listening.
Listening Cloze
Listening cloze tasks (sometimes called cloze dictations or
partial dictations) require the test-taker to listen to a story, monologue, on
conversation and simultaneously read the written text in which selected words
or phrases have been deleted. Cloze procedure is most commonly associated with
reading only (see chapter 9). In its generic form, the test consists of a
passage in which every nth word (typically every seventh word) is deleted and
the text-taker is asked to supply an appropriate word. in a listening cloze
task, test-taker see a transcript of the passage that they are to listening to
and fill in the blanks with the words or phrases that they hear.
Information Transfer
Selective listening can also be assessed through an
information transfer technique in which aurally processed information must be
transferred to a visual representation, such as labeling a diagram, identifying
an element in a picture, completing a form, or showing routes on a map.
SENTENCE REPETITION
Sentence repetition is far from a flawless listening
assessment task. buck (2001 p. 79) noted that that such tasks “are not just
tests of listening, but tests of general oral skills”. Further, this tasks may
tests only recognition of sounds, and it can easily be contaminated by lack of
short-term memory ability, thus invalidating it as an assessment toning
comprehension error from an oral production error. therefore, sentence
repetition tasks should be used with caution.
EXTENSIVE LISTENING
Drawing a clear distinction between any two of the
categories of listening referred to hear is problematic, but perhaps the
fuzziest division is between selective and extensive listening. As we gradually
move along the continuum from smaller to larger stretches of language, and from
micro- to macro skill of listening. the probability of using more extensive
listening task increases.
DICTATION
Dictation is a widely researched genre of assessing
listening comprehension. in a dictation, test takers hear passage, typically of
50 to 100 word, recited three times: first at normal speech; than, with long
pauses between phrases or natural word groups, during which time test takers
write down what they have just heard; and finally, at normal speech once more
so they can check there work and proofread.
Scoring criteria for several possible kinds of errors:
Spelling error only, but the word appears to have been
heard correctly
Spelling and / obvious misrepresentation of word,
illegible word
Grammatical error (for example, test-takers hears I can’t
do it, writes I can do it)
skipped word or phrase
permutation words not in the original
replacement of a word with an appropriate synonym
Communicative stimulus – response tasks
Example of extensive listening is found in a popular genre
of assessment tasks in which the task-takers is presented with a stimulus
monologue or conversation and than is asked to respond to a set of
comprehension questions.
Authentic listening tasks
Ideally, the language assessment field would have a
stockpile of listening test types that are cognitively demanding,
communicative, and authentic, not to mention interactive by means of
integration with speaking. The nature of test as a sample of performance and a
set of task with limited time frames implies an equally limited capacity to
mirror all the real-world contexts of listening performance.
There is no such thing as a communicative test, “stated back
(2001.p92).”Every test requires some components of communicative language
ability, and no test covers them all similarly, with the nation of authenticity
every task shares some characteristics with target-language tasks, and no test
is completely authentic.
1. Note-taking. in the academic world, classroom lectures by
professors are common features of a non-native English-user’s experience .
These notes are evaluated by the teacher on a 30-points system, as follows:
Scoring system for lecture notes
0-15 points
Visual representation: Are your notes clear and easily to
read? Can you easily find and retrieve information from them? Do you use the
space on the paper to visually represented ideas? Do you use indention headers,
numbers, etc?
0-10 points
Accuracy: Do you accurately indicate main ideas from
lectures? Do you note important details and supporting information and
examples? Do you leave out unimportant information and tangents?
0-5 points
Symbols and abbreviations: Do you use symbols and
abbreviations as much as possible to save time? Ado you avoid writing out whole
words and do you avoids writing down every single word the lectures say?
2. Editing. Another authentic task provides both a written
and a spoken stimulus, and requires the test-taker to listen for discrepancies.
Scoring achieves relatively high reliability as there are usually a small
number of specific differences that must be identified. Here is the way the
task proceeds.
3. Interpretive tasks. One of the intensive listening tasks
described above was paraphrasing a story or conversation. An interpretive task
extends the stimulus material to a longer stretch of discourse and forces the
test – takers to infer a response potential stimulus include.
Song lyrics
(recited) poetry
radio/television news reports and
an oral account of an experience
4. Retelling. in a related task, tasks takers listen to a
story or news event and simply retell it, or summarize it, either orally (on an
audiotape) or in writing. In so doing, test takers must identify the gist, main
idea, purpose, supporting points.
ASSESSING READING
Assessing Reading Proficiency
Reading ability is very difficult to assess accurately. In
the communicative competence model, a student's reading level is the level at
which that student is able to use reading to accomplish communication goals.
This means that assessment of reading ability needs to be correlated with
purposes for reading.
Reading Aloud
A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable
indicator of that student's reading ability. A student who is perfectly capable
of understanding a given text when reading it silently may stumble when asked
to combine comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability in the way
that reading aloud requires.
In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will
rarely, if ever, need to do outside of the classroom. As a method of
assessment, therefore, it is not authentic: It does not test a student's
ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.
However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a
student is "seeing" word endings and other grammatical features when
reading. To use reading aloud for this purpose, adopt the "read and look
up" approach: Ask the student to read a sentence silently one or more
times, until comfortable with the content, then look up and tell you what it
says. This procedure allows the student to process the text, and lets you see
the results of that processing and know what elements, if any, the student is
missing.
Comprehension Questions
Instructors often use comprehension questions to test
whether students have understood what they have read. In order to test
comprehension appropriately, these questions need to be coordinated with the
purpose for reading. If the purpose is to find specific information,
comprehension questions should focus on that information. If the purpose is to
understand an opinion and the arguments that support it, comprehension
questions should ask about those points.
In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for
reading before they start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they
are going to need to answer before they begin reading. To make reading
assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the classroom,
therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they
begin to read the test passage.
Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment,
comprehension questions are beside the point. As a more authentic form of
assessment, have students talk or write about why they found the text enjoyable
and interesting (or not).
Authentic Assessment
In order to provide authentic assessment of students'
reading proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses
to which students might put information they have gained through reading.
It must have a purpose other than assessment
It must require students to demonstrate their level of
reading comprehension by completing some task
To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the
type of response that reading a particular selection would elicit in a
non-classroom situation. For example, after reading a weather report, one might
decide what to wear the next day; after reading a set of instructions, one
might repeat them to someone else;
after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate
post-reading tasks. You can then develop a checklist or rubric that will allow
you to evaluate each student's comprehension of specific parts of the text. See
Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.
REFERENCES
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/assessread.html
http://sitiroliyahwigati.blogspot.co.id/2010/05/assessing-listening.html
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