TESTING LISTENING
By: Nane Magdalena
06920090052
Introduction
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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
Specifying what candidate
should be able to…
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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
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
Setting Criteria Levels of Performance
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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.
Setting Criteria Levels of Performance
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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.
Possible Techniques
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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
Possible Techniques
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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
Possible Techniques
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Transcription
 To
transcribe numbers or words which spelled letter by
letter
 The letters should not already be able to spell
Setting Criteria Levels of Performance
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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)
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Presenting the texts (live or recorded?)
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
 Use
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Scoring  the correct response was intended
THANK YOU….