John Field
Universities of Bedfordshire and Cambridge
ISLI, University of Reading
12 th November, 2013
Teachers and EFL materials writers tend to favour standard test formats: partly to prepare learners for international tests and partly through lack of alternatives
But the needs of teachers and the designers of international high stakes tests are clearly very different
Testers aim for:
Reliability (avoiding ‘subjective judgement’)
Ease of marking
Teachers / local testers need:
In depth information about the listening skills of individual learners so that testing can lead into instruction.
Comprehension.
So what do we mean by comprehension?
‘Understanding’
Understanding what?
Giving correct answers to comprehension questions
‘Listening for gist’
‘Listening for information’
‘Listening for main idea’
‘Local listening’
‘Global listening’
[CEFR B2 goals]
‘Can understand standard spoken language, live or broadcast, on both familiar and unfamiliar topics normally encountered in personal, social, academic or vocational life. Only extreme background noise, inadequate discourse structure and/or idiomatic usage influence the ability to understand
Can understand the main ideas of propositionally and linguistically complex speech on both concrete and abstract topics delivered in a standard dialect, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation
Can follow extended speech and complex lines of argument provide the topic is familiar and the direction of the talk is signposted by explicit markers’.
.
That tells me what L2 listeners should aim for under my teaching/ testing …
These descriptors define the input or output in listening, but say nothing about the process we are trying to test .
They cannot be said to support assessment for learning.
There is a new interest among testers in what goes on in the mind of the test taker .
We need to know whether high-stakes test actually test what they claim to test. Can a listening test, for example, accurately predict the ability of a test taker to study at an English medium university?
At local level, we need to use tests to diagnose learner problems so that the tests can feed into learning. This is especially true of listening.
Does a test elicit from test takers the kind of process that they would use in a real-world context? In the case of listening, are we testing the kinds of process that listeners would actually use ?
Or do the recordings and formats that we use lead test takers to behave differently from the way they would in real life?
A. Ask learners to report on the processes they adopted when taking a test (e.g. by explaining how they got their answers)
B. Use a model of listening that is supported by evidence from psychology. Match the processes produced by a test against the model.
Item: A demand for golf courses attracted the interest of both
………… and businessmen.
Key: There was … enormous interest amongst landowners not to mention businessmen
S: I think I um + I the key words. I think most + most useful for me is the ‘businessmen’
R: right
S: because when I heard this before + I heard I heard
‘landowners’ and ‘businessmen’
R: so you you recognised the the word ‘landowners’
S: oh yeah
R and [it was] close to the word ‘businessmen’
S: yeah this is ever close so I think maybe
Test takers listen out for words from the (written) items in order to locate where the answer is likely to be.
R: is there anything that you heard that helped you?
S: I have the problem about that because I am concentrate on the two of the questions so …I didn’t realise
R: so
S: his his + he’s already go to the 9
R: right ok so you were still listening out for number 8
S: yeah and number 7
Professional Development for IATEFL 2013 15
Learners recognise and exploit the convention that questions are asked in the same order as the recording.
This provides them with a rough sequential outline of the recording before they even begin to listen.
If a listener fails to find the answer to one question, he/she may go on to miss the answer to the next one as well..
Professional Development for IATEFL 2013 16
The items in (e.g.) a gap-filling task potentially provide a candidate with:
An outline of what the recording covers
A set of gapped sentences that follow the sequence of the recording
Key words with which to locate information
Sequences which may echo the wording of the recording or the order of words
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Correct answer: Tom suggests that golf courses could
also be used as NATURE RESERVES’
S: number 13 is I’m not sure but um + he said ‘crack’
R: you heard the word ‘crack’?
S: crack …but I don’t know the meaning of ‘crack’
R: er you know it seemed to be an important word
S: yes I think so
R: ok + how did you spell ‘crack’ if if you don’t know the
S: c-r-a-c-k
R: right so you guessed the spelling did you?
S: I guess yes
Most importantly, courses should be designed to attract rather than drive away wildlife.
Professional Development for IATEFL 2013 18
Learners sometimes simply listen out for prominent words – even if they do not understand them.
This is partly a reflection of their level. At level B1 and below, listeners are very dependent upon picking up salient words rather than chunks or whole utterances.
This tendency is increased by the use of gap filling tasks, which focus attention at word level .
Professional Development for IATEFL 2013 19
a. Conventional test formats provide much more information than is available in real-world contexts
(and do so in a written form) BUT…
b. Conventional test formats may also be more demanding than real-life listening because of divided attention effects , where the learner has to read and listen or read, write and listen.
Does the input impose similar listening demands to those of a real-world speaker?
To what extent do these recordings resemble authentic everyday speech?
Authentic
Scripted
Semi-scripted / re-recorded
Improvised
‘All tests are based on authentic situations’ Cambridge
ESOL PET Handbook
Exam Boards prefer this type because it enables them to
‘ Reduce noise’
Control speech rate
Simplify vocabulary and grammar if necessary
Introduce distractors
Eliminate redundancy (or add it with single-play tasks)
Actors adapt their delivery to fit punctuation.
They pause regularly at the ends of clauses
There are few hesitation pauses.
No overlap between speakers
Accent
Speech rate: speed and consistency
Pausing
Level and placing of focal stress
Number of speakers
Pitch of voice; familiarity of voice
Precision of articulation
Test takers need time to adjust (normalise) to the voice of an unfamiliar speaker. Best not to focus questions on the opening 10 seconds of a longer recording .
Because of the need to normalise, it is best not to have too many speakers in a test recording . Listening difficulty increases as the number of voices increases beyond one M and one F (Brown & Yule, 1983).
Adapting to voices is cognitively demanding. Testers must bear in mind the cognitive demands of normalising to speech rate and voice pitch . Is it fair to add to those demands by featuring a variety of accents?
Does the task elicit processes which resemble those that a listener would use in a real-world listening event?
Multiple-choice
Gap filling
True/False/Don’t know
Multiple matching: Identify which of the five speakers is a lorry driver / a politician / a musician
Visual multiple choice
Examination boards recognise that all of these have their drawbacks - which is why they argue for a mixture of tasks
You hear an explorer talking about a journey he’s making. How will he travel once he is across the river?
A. by motor vehicle
B. on horseback
C. on foot
(FCE Handbook, 2008: 60)
(FCE Sample Test 1:1
The engine’s full of water at the moment, it’s very doubtful if any of the trucks can get across the river in this weather. The alternative is to carry all the stuff across using the old footbridge, which is perfectly possible …and then use horses rather than trucks for the rest of the trip all the way instead of just the last 10 or 15 kilometres as was our original intention. We can always pick up the vehicles again on the way down…
(FCE Sample Test 1:1
The engine’s full of water at the moment, it’s very doubtful if any of the trucks can get across the river in this weather. The alternative is to carry all the stuff across using the old foot bridge, which is perfectly possible …and then use horses rather than trucks for the rest of the trip all the way instead of just the last 10 or 15 kilometres as was our original intention. We can always pick up the vehicles again on the way down…
Conventional formats require the listener to:
Map from written information to spoken
Eliminate negative possibilities as well as identify positive ones (esp with MCQ and T/F )
Read and write as well as listen (esp gap filling )
Engage in complex tasks which take us well beyond listening (esp. multiple matching )
Provide items after a first playing of the recording and before a second. This ensures more natural listening, without preconceptions or advance information other than general context.
Keep items short . Loading difficulty on to items
(especially MCQ ones) just biases the test in favour of reading rather than listening.
Items should avoid echoing words in the recording
Favour tasks (e.g. multiple matching) that allow items to ignore the order of the recording and to focus on global meaning rather than local detail .
Ignore the questions in the coursebook or present them orally.
Ask questions and get answers in the first language
Use whole class oral summary (What have you
understood so far?), then replay the recording
At lower levels of English, ask learners to transcribe small parts of a recording
At higher levels, use note-taking and reporting back
Get learners to work in pairs and compare notes
( Field 2008)
Decoding
Speech signal
Word search
Words Parsing
Meaning
Meaning construction
Discourse construction
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An item in a test can target any of these levels:
Decoding:
She caught the (a) 9.15 (b) 9.50 (c) 5.15 (d) 5.50 train.
Lexical search:
She went to London by …….
Factual information:
Where did she go and how?
Meaning construction:
Was she keen on going by train?
Discourse construction.
What was the main point made by the speaker?
In theory, a good test should target all levels of listening in order to provide a complete picture of the test taker’s command of all the relevant processes.
In practice, higher levels may be too demanding in the early stages of L2 listening. Novice listeners focus quite heavily on word-level decoding, which does not leave them enough spare attention to give to wider meaning.
In addition, certain test formats may tap almost exclusively into one level. Gap-filling is a good example
(Field 2008)
PROPOSITION
ENRICH
MEANING
MEANING REPRESENTATION
HANDLE INFO
DISCOURSE REPRESENTATION
Questions may and should be asked at three levels:
Factual : local information
Meaning in context : requiring the listener to relate what the speaker says to the context or to draw conclusions which are not expressed by the speaker
Discourse : showing a global understanding of what was said (including speaker intentions etc.)
The listener has to:
Relate what was said to its context
Enrich the meaning (drawing upon world knowledge)
Make inferences
Resolve reference (she, it, this, did so)
Interpret the speaker’s intentions
All of these indicate possible question types
Choose
Connect
Is it important? Is it relevant?
How is it linked to the last utterance?
Compare Is what I think I heard consistent with what was said so far?
Construct
What is the overall line of argument?
Choose : the tester chooses which information points to focus on – sometimes choosing points that are not central to the recording
Connect : Much testing focuses on single points, with no connection to those before and after
Compare : Tests rarely ask learners to check information (for example, comparing two accounts of an accident)
Construct .
Tests rarely seek for evidence that learners can construct an outline based upon macro-and micro points / headings and subheadings
Ask questions at discourse level:
What is the main point of the recording? / Give three main points.
What is the connection between Point A and Point B?
Complete a skeleton summary of the text with main points and sub-points
Ask learners to compare two recordings for similarities and differences
Ask learners to summarise a recording orally or in the form of notes (in L1 or L2)
Large scale high-stakes tests have major constraints which prevent them from testing listening in a way that fully represents the skill.
Reliability and ease of marking
Highly controlled test methods, using traditional formats that the candidate knows
Little attention possible to individual variation or alternative answers
Local smaller-scale tests afford the possibility of testing a wider rage of listening processes with:
• More open ended questions
• More scope for testing information handling
• Marking on an individual basis
• Possible acceptance of alternative answers
Properly designed, progress tests might enable the tester to diagnose specific listening problems.
In a follow up (ideally soon after), the teacher/tester can ask: Why did you give that answer? What do you think you heard?
In this way, a test can help to determine which aspects of listening should be focused on in later small-scale practice exercises.
In other words, this kind of test can be formative rather than just judgemental.
Field, J. (2008) Listening in the Language Classroom.
Cambridge: CUP
Field, J. (2009). The cognitive validity of the lecture listening section of the IELTS listening paper. IELTS
Research Reports 9, Cambridge
Field, J. (2013) Cognitive validity. In Geranpayeh, A. &
Taylor, L. (eds.) Examining Listening. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
jcf1000@dircon.co.uk
Transitory: no long-term record to refer to
Happens in real time
Need to store while analysing
Need to carry forward information in the mind
Speech rate is not under listener's control
Few word boundary markers
The speech signal is highly variable as compared to spelling / fonts.
Knowledge of a word
recognition of the word in connected speech
Many high level errors of comprehension have their origins in low-level errors of word recognition