Testing Listening Comprehension

Testing Listening Comprehension 11.1 Introduction Listening comprehension is one of the most fundamental language skills and also the most complicated one. Primarily, communication is feasible only when the two parties involved are able to comprehend each other. Though one can make himself understood by various means (e.g., dramatizing), the major difficulty in communication is that of understanding what one hears. While the speaker can control what he wants to say, the listener cannot control what is said to him. Moreover, although the elements that comprise listening and speaking are the same, the former precedes the latter and is a prerequisit for it. Only after competence in listening comprehension has been established will one be able to take on performance and develop it toward communicative fluency. That is, unless one has the ability to understand a message, he certainly cannot produce it. Nevertheless, the task of comprehension is cumbersome as compared with that of reading and writing. In listening comprehension, essentially the opportunity to regress or mediate is not possible. The stream of speech continues without waiting for the listener to catch up. Furthermore, although the spoken modality contains more redundancy than the written one, the listener needs to be more attentive because he may not know all the elements of what he hears. In addition, the human brain's limited capacity for storing information does not allow absorbing the whole of the oral stimulus. For this reason, listening comprehension test items often combine listening with reading or writing. The testee hears the stimulus and indicates his 213 In comprehension by writing or by marking one of the provided choices in his test booklet. As such, listening comprehension test items are more complex than items testing other skills. Tests of listening comprehension attempt to measure the examinees' ability to comprehend and interpret the oral stimuli.(In particular, listening comprehension tests for the beginning and low intermediate levels attempt to assess the testees' comprehension of the specific elements of the language-statements, questions, and brief conversational exchanges) Tests for higher-intermediate and advanced levels, however, assess the examinees' understanding of both informal and formal lectures and their comprehension of native speakers in all kinds of speech situations) Typically, subjects at intermediate and advanced levels comprise students who wish to embark on programs in environments in which English is the medium of communication. I pictuns questio Lecture and talks 11.2 Types of Items Piltat Pistented message Ideally, listenig comprehension should be appraised through a procedure that requires the testee to listen to the stimulus material and choose one of the spoken choices based on the information available in the stimulus itself: Example 1 examinee hears Par examinee reads When do you leave? Its app A) At six. A B) With my wife. B C) Yes, I do. C D) On main Street. D This item type is considered to be a "pure" item of listening comprehen-sion because it does not require the testee to read or write. Yet, this procedure is basically not fair. It may put too great a burden on the testee's memory. Moreover, experience shows if such an item is administered to a 214 group, as soon as one testee attempts to check the letter representing the correct choice, his effort shows the less proficient testees that the correct choice has just been made. Another pure item type consists of specific oral instructions to be carried out by the testee. He is, for example, asked to perform the following: Ali, clean the blackboard. Put your books under the desk. indi jut Point to the first chair in the first row. This type of item is generally suitable for children and beginners because its format does not require the testees to produce language in any form to show their understanding of the command. Nonetheless, it has certain limitations. Primarily, it limits the testing of only requests and imperatives. Also, this kind of item has to be administered to the examinees individually. To do away with such problems, general listening tests comprise items which utilize (among other skills) some reading. Typically, each item includes a verbal stimulus and printed choices in the testees' test booklet. Three simple, yet effective and practical, ways to test specific elements of the language and also three ways to test overall comprehension are exemplified below. 11.2.1 Pictures Pictures offer various possibilities to assess short samples of speech. The testee, for instance, is given a picture and asked to identify as true or false the statement(s) he hears about it. Example 2 examinee hears The boy's washing the car. examinee reads T F 215 If the picture illustrates several activities, more than one statement may be made about it. In a variation of this format, the examiner provides the examinee with four related pictures and asks him to indicate which picture illustrates the statement he hears. Example 3 examinee hears The boy's washing the car. examinee reads A B C D A 田 B C D 08 Pictures should be simple so that they do not cause any misinterpretation. Of course, they do not need to be works of art. A simple drawing can provide the necessary stimulus. Example 4 examinee hears A square is to the left of a circle. There's a line examinee reads A B C 216