Preparing Listening Questions: Assessing Listening Skills

Preparing Listening Questions: Assessing Listening Skills

Listening is

Intensive: Listening for perception of the components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of a large stretch of language.

2) Responsive: listening to a relatively short stretch of language (a greeting, question, command, comprehension check, etc.) in order to make an equally short response.

3) Selective: Processing stretches of discourse such as short monologues for several minutes in order to “scan” for certain information. The purpose of such perfromance is not necessarily to look for global or general meanings, but to be able to comprehend designated information in a context of longer stretches of spoken language (such as classroom directions from a teacher, TV or radio news items, or stories). Assessment tasks in selective listening could ask students, for example, to listen for names, numbers, a grammatical category, directions (in a map exercise), or certain facts and events.

4) Extensive: Listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken language. Extensive performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures to listening to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose. Listening for the gist, for the main idea, and making inferences are all part of extensive listening.

Micro- and Macroskills of Listening

Microskills

Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English.
Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term memory.
Recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed and unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, intonation contours, and their role in signalling information.
Recognize reduced forms of words.
Distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance.
Process speech at different rates of delivery.
Process speech containing pausses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables.
Recognize grammatical word classes (noun, verbs, etc.) system (e.g., tense, agreement, pluralization) patterns, rules and elliptical forms.
Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and minor constituents.
recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.
Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse.

Macroskills

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 meaning.
Use facial, kinesic, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher meanings.
Develop and use 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

Clustering
Redundancy
Reduced forms
Performance variables
Colloquial language
Rate of delivery
Stress, rhythm and intonation
Interaction

Intensive Listening

Recognizing Phonological and Morphological Elements

Phonemic pair, consonants

Hear: He’s from California.

Read: a) She’s from California

b) He’s from California.

Phonemic pair, vowel

Hear: Is he living?

Read: a) Is he living?

b) Is he leaving?

Morphological Pair, -ed ending

Hear: I missed you very much.

Read: a) I missed you very much.

b) I miss you very much.

One word Stimulus

Hear: vine

Read: a) vine

b) wine

Paraphrase Recognition (words, phrases, sentences)

Sentence Paraphrase

Hear: Hellow, my name’s Keiko. I come from Japan.

Read: a) Keiko is comfortable in Japan.

b) Keiko wants to come to Japan.

c) Keiko is Japanese.

d) Keiko likes Japan.

Dialogue Paraphrase

Hear: Man: Hi Maria, my name’s George

Woman: Nice to meet you, George. Are you American?

Man: No, I’m Canadian

Read: a) George lives in the United States.

b) George is American.

c) George comes from Canada.

d) Maria is Canadian.

Responsive Listening

Appropriate response to a question?

Hear: How much time did it take you to do your homework?

Read: a) In about an hour.

b) About an hour.

c) About $10.

d) Yes I did.

Open-ended response to a question

Hear: How much time did it take you to do your homework?

Read: ……………………………………………………….

Selective Listening

Listening Cloze

Hear: Ladies and gentlemen, now I have some connecting gate information for those of you making connections to other flights out of San Fransisco.

Flight …………… to Portland will depart from gate …………at …………. P.M.

Flight …………… to Reno will depart at …………. P.M from gate ………….

Flight …………… to Monterey will depart at …………. P.M from gate …………

And flight …………… to Sacramento will depart from gate …………at …………. P.M.

Information Transfer

Multiple-picture-cued selection and/or single-picture-cued verbal multiple choice

Hear: Choose the correct picture. In my back yard I have a bird feeder. Yesterday, there were two birds and a squirrel fighting for the last few seeds in the bird feeder. The squirrel was on top of the bird feeder while the larger bird was sat at the bottom of the feeder screeching at the squirrel. The smaller bird was flying around the squirrel, trying to scare it away.

See

Chart Filling: Scanning

Hear: Lucy gets up at eight o’clock every morning except on weekends. She has English on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at ten o’clock. She has History on Tuesdays and Thursdays at two o’clock. She takes Chemistry on Monday from two o’clock to six o’clock. She plays tennis on weekends at four o’clock. She eats lunch at twelve o’clock everyday except Saturday and Sunday.

Now listen a second time. There will be a pause after each sentence to give you time to fill in the chart.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Weekends
8:00	get up	get up	get up	get up	get up
10:00
12:00
2:00
4:00
6:00

You can alternate this activity by

Map Filling

Zoo Cages Filling

Car Accident Scenario Chart

Extensive Listening

Dictation

Dictation is a widely researched genre of assessing listening comprehension. In a dictation, test takers hear a passage, typically of 50 to 100 words, recited three times: first, at normal speed; then, 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 speed once more so they can check their work and proofread.

Communicative Stimulus response tasks

Dialogue and Multiple-choice comprehension items

Directions: Now you will hear a conversation between Lynn and her doctor. You will hear the conversation two times. After you hear the conersation the second time, choose the correct answer for the questions 11-15 below…

Hear

Doctor: Good morning, Lynn. What’s the problem?

Lynn: Well, you see, I have a terrible headache, my nose is running and I’m really dizzy.

Doctor: OK. Anything else?

Lynn: I’ve been coughing, I think I have a fever, and my stomach aches.

Doctor: I see. When did this start?

Lynn: Well, let’s see, I went to the lake last weekend, and after I returned home I started sneezing.

Doctor: Hmm. You must have the flu. You should get lots of rest, drink hot beverages, and stay war. Do you follow me?

Lynn: Well, uh, yeah, bt… should I take some medicine?

Doctor: Sleep and rest are as good as medicine when you have the flu.

Lynn: Okay, thanks Dr. Brown

Read:

11. What is Lynn’s problem?

a) She feels horrible.

b) She ran too fast at the lake.

c) She’s been drinking too many hot beverages.

12. When did Lynn’s problem start?

a) When she saw her doctor.

b) After she came home from the lake.

c) Before she went to the lake.

13. The doctor said that Lynn …………………………

a) flew to the lake last weekend.

b) must not get the flu.

c) probably has the flu.

14. The doctor told Lynn …………………………

a) to rest.

b) to follow him.

c) to take some medicine.

15. According to Dr. Brown, sleep and rest are……………. medicine when you have the flu.

a) more effective than

b) as effective as

c) less effective than

Dialogue and Authentic questions on details

You will hear a conversation between a detective and a man. The tape will plaw the conversation twice. After you hear the conersation the second time, choose the correct answer on your test sheet.

Detective: Where were you last night at eleven P.M., the time of murder?

Man: Uh, let’s see, well, I was just starting to see a movie.

Detective: Did you go alone?

Man: No, uh, well, I was with my friend, uh, Bill. Yeah, I was with Bill.

Detective: What did you do after that?

Man: We went out to dinner, then I dropped her off at her place.

Detective: Then you went home?

Man: Yeah.

Detective: When did you get home?

Man: A little before midnight.

5. Where was the man at 11:00 P.M.?

a) In a restaurant

b) In a theatre

c) At home

6. Was he with someone?

a) He was alone.

b) He was with his wife.

c) He was with a friend.

7. The man is probably lyin because (name two clues) (requires interference)

1. …………………………………………………

2. ………………………………………………...

Editing a written version of an aural stimulus

Read : written stimulus material( a news report, an e-mail from a friend, notes from a lecture, or an editorial in a newspaper)

Hear: a spoken version of of the stimulus that deviates, in a finite number of facts opinions, from the original wrritten form.

Mark: the written stimulus by circling any words, phrases, facts, or opinions that show discrepancy between the two versions.

Interpretive questions

Hear:

Song lyrics

Recited poetry

Radio/TV news reports

An oral account of an experince

Interpret by open-ended questions?

Why was the singer feeling sad?

What do you think the political activists do next, why?

Retelling/Summarizing

Hear: story, news report etc.

Retell/Summarize

References

Alderson, J. Charles (2000) : “Assessing Reading” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK

•Brown, H. Douglas (2004) : “ Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Pracrices” Pearson Education, NY, USA

•Douglas, Dan (2000) : “Assessing Languages for Specific Purposes” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK

•Read John (2000) : “Assessing Vocabulary” Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK

•Rost, Michael (2002) : “Teaching and Researching Listening” Pearson Education, Great Britain

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