1. ASSESSMENT OF LISTENING
Compiled & Presented by
ELT SUPERVISOR
ABDUL HALIM HAMED GHANDER

2. overview •Reflect on assessment of listening
•Overview of formative and summative assessment
•Examine different formative assessment tasks and instruments for listening development
•Clarification questions on tasks/instruments presented
•Consider some fundamental criteria for formative and summative assessment of listening
•Questions and answers

3. Checklist to guide listening performance
Listening Assessment
Checklist to guide listening performance

9. When do we assess listening ? How ? Activity
During a unit of study: quizzes
After completion of a unit: unit/achievement test
At the end of a course: final exam

10. Imagine -------- Diagnose: Impact: Solution:
Impact:
Solution:

11. What is the source of this error?
Imagine-----
A student is listening to a recording in class.
The speaker says “I won't go to London”.
The student interprets this as “I want to go to London.”
What is the source of this error?

12. Diagnose: Impact: Solution:
The student is making a small mistake based on phoneme discrimination.
Impact:
This mistake may affect the interpretation of what comes next as a whole.
Solution:
We should view the principal aim of a full length listening session as "Diagnostic".
-It should provide us with insights into where understanding has broken down
-Designing a small- scale remedial exercises which aims to prevent errors of interpretations.

13. What are the differences between formative and summative assessment?

14. Differences between formative and summative assessment
Formative assessment
Summative assessment
What?
Why?
When?
How?
By whom?
Decision to make?

15. Differences between formative and summative assessment
Formative assessment
Summative assessment
What?
*All objectives of the unit, a few at a time.
*Learning processes.
*Selected course/program objectives, representative of the level assessed.
Why?
*Provide feedback to student and teacher on progress in learning.
*Determine need for and/or type of remediation required.
* Determine level for placement purposes.
*Course pass/failure.
*Certification
When?
*Continuous, as part of regular learning activities.
* Periodic, at end of a course or program.
How?
*Observation
*Checklists
*Portfolios
*Standardized tests (norm-referenced).
* Achievement/Placement/Proficiency tests.
By whom?
*Teacher
*Student
*Peer
* Institution
*Educational jurisdiction (school board ,government).
Decision to make?
*Adjust teaching procedures.
*Adapt learning activities.
*Provide individual remediation on strategies and/or targeted skill(s).
*Award credits (promotion).
* Certification.
*Program evaluation.

16. Assessment & Learning
Assessment need not be stand-alone activity at odds with teaching & learning; it can be a form of inquiry that accompanies daily practices and interactions;
Teachers are implicated in this process through support and the systematic and tailored feedback they provide;
Learners are expected to move toward their own source of feedback/support, guiding themselves more independently.
(Poehner, Foreign Language Classroom Assessment in Support of Teaching and Learning)

18. Metacognition and formative assessment
Metacognition can best be enhanced with formative assessment (low-stakes activities that provide teachers with feedback on level of student understanding) (Lang, 2012)
Learners experience greater success in listening comprehension and weaker learners benefit most (Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari, 2010)

19. Guide for listening Worksheet that can be used with any listening text
Emphasizes the ‘top-down’ dimension of listening
Teacher contextualizes students by:
–Informing students of the topic, or
–Engaging students in a discussion of the topic, or
–Preceding the listening activity with a reading activity on the same general topic.

20. Issues in listening assessment
Validity: To what degree does it accurately measure what you want to measure?
Reliability: To what degree is it dependable?
Authenticity: To what degree is it representative of real-life language use?
Washback: To what degree does it provide useful feedback for the learner and influence the teaching process?
(Brown and Abeywickrama, 2010)

21. Validity in listening assessment
measure comprehension (not hearing, spelling, prior knowledge of a topic or reading long multiple choice questions)
reflect the learning objectives and listening tasks of the unit/course

22. Reliability in listening assessment
Minimize anxiety
Ensure all learners can hear/see the text/video equally and that there are no distracting noises
Avoid ambiguous or ‘trick’ test items
Ensure more than one scorer for correcting open- ended test items
Critical to high-stakes exams

23. Authenticity In Listening Assessment
Use texts with authentic, real-life speech
Avoid using texts that are dense and cognitively demanding (meant to be read and not listened to)
Choose comprehension tasks that reflect real- life purposes for listening
Avoid difficult accents and dialects

24. Washback In Assessing Listening
Impact of assessment on classroom teaching
Potential of assessment to provide feedback for future learning

25. Questions
take a few minutes to ask questions in chat and I will try to cover some recurrent themes in my responses

26. The importance of listening
(1) often implied as a component of speaking,
(2) input in the successful of language acquisition,
(3) applicable in many fields: workplace, education, home-context.
Assessment of listening must be made because we neither observe the actual act of listening nor the product

27. Listening Listening is receptive skills The importance of listening:
often implied as a component of speaking,
input in the successful of language acquisition,
applicable in many fields: workplace, education, home-context.
Assessment of listening must be made because we neither observe the actual act of listening nor the product

28. What makes listening difficult?
Clustering:
Redundancy
Reduced forms
Performance variables
Colloquial language
Rate of delivery
Stress, rhythm, and intonation
Interaction

29. Basic Types of Listening
Heaton (1988) argued that developing listening skills can be done through a listening comprehension test.
He, therefore, listed the two categories of auditory test:
Test of phoneme discrimination and of sensitivity to stress and intonation
Test of listening comprehension
Brown (2004) stated that effective test or appropriate assessment designing must begun with the specification of objectives or criteria which can be classified on several types of listening performance.

30. THE PERFORMANCE of Listening
comprehending language structure elements
understanding pragmatic context
determining meaning of auditory input
developing the gist, a global/comprehensive understanding
Intensive
Responsive
Selective
Extensive
Micro
MAcro

31. Designing assessment Tasks:
INTENSIVE Listening
Phonological and morphological elements recognition
Paraphrase recognition

32. phonological & Morphological elements recognition

33. Phonemic pair, consonant
Test-takers hear:
He’s from California.
Test-takers read:
(a) He’s from California.
(b) She’s from California.
Phonemic pair, vowels
Is he living?
(a) Is he leaving?
(b)Is he living?

34. Phoneme discrimination, pictures Test-takers see the pictures
Test-takers hear:
(a) pin (b) pen (c) pair (d) pain
(a) shark (b) shock (c) sack (d) lack
(a) thin (b) tin (c) fin (d) din

35. Test-takers see the pictures
Test-takers hear:
1. Pain – pain
2. Sock – sock

36. Morphological pair, -ed ending
Test-takers hear:
I missed you very much.
Test-takers read:
(a) I missed you very much.
(b) I miss you very much.

37. Stress pattern in (can’t ) :
Test-takers hear:
My friend can’t go to the party.
Test-takers read:
(a) My friend can’t go to the party.
(b) My friend can go to the party.
One-word stimulus
Test-takers hear: vine
(a) vine
(b) wine

38. Paraphrase recognition

39. Sentence paraphrase Test-takers hear:
Hello, my name’s Keiko. I come from Japan.
Test-takers read:
(a) Keiko is comfortable in Japan.
(b) Keiko wants to come to Japan.
(c) Keiko is Japanese.
(d) Keiko likes Japan.
Dialogue paraphrase
Man : Hi, Maria, my name’s George.
Women: Nice to meet you, George. Are you American?
Man : No, I’m Canadian.
(a) George lives in the United States.
(b) George is American.
(c) George comes from Canada.
(d) Maria is Canadian.

40. Designing assessment Tasks:
RESPONSIVE Listening
Appropriate response to question
Open-ended response to a question

41. Appropriate response to questions

42. Test-takers hear: Test-takers read: Test-takers hear:
How much time did you take to do your homework?
Test-takers read:
(a) in about an hour.
(b) about an hour.
(c) about $10.
(d) Yes, I did.
Test-takers hear:
Does Allison mind you playing the piano?
Test-takers read:
(a) yes, she’s always thinking about it.
(b) no, she rather likes it
(c) no, she doesn’t play the piano.
(d) yes, she must be careful.

43. Open-ended response to questions

44. Test-takers hear : Test-takers
How much time did you take to do your homework?
Test-takers
write/ speak

45. Designing assessment Tasks: Selective Listening
Listening cloze
Information transfer
Sentence repetition

46. Listening cloze

47. Test-takers hear:
Ladies and gentlemen, I now have some connecting gate information for those of you making connections to other flights out of San Francisco.
Flight seven-oh-six to Portland will depart from gate seventy-three at nine-thirty P.M
 Flight ten-forty-five to Reno will depart at nine-fifty P.M. from gate seventeen.
Flight four-forty to Monterey will depart at nine-thirty-five P.M. from gate sixty.
And flight sixteen-oh-three to Sacramento will depart from gate nineteen at ten-fifteen .
Test-takers write the missing words or phrases in the blanks.

48. Information transfer

49. Multiple-picture-cued selection

50. Based on the picture below, the test takers have to pick out the true spoken statement and write T at the side of the appropriate numbers. Then, write F at the side of the numbers of the false statements.
Test takers hear:
1. The lorry’s on the left of the motorcyclist. ( )
2. The car’s travelling in the same direction. ( )
3. A dog’s running in front of the car ( )

51. In the following listening tests students, the test takers, have five pictures in front of them. They listen to four sentences, at the end of which they are required to select the appropriate picture being described.
The test takers hear:
Both car doors are open.
It’s daylight but both headlamps are on.
The man who’s repairing the car is lying underneath it.
Although the girl sees the man working hard, she doesn’t help him.

52. Thus the test takers are able to
narrow down the choice available to them as follows:
1. B C D E (only A shows one door open)
2. B D E (only C shows the headlamps off)
3. B D ( only E shows the man standing up)
4. D ( only B shows the girl helping the man)
Single-picture-cued verbal multiple-choice
Test-takers see: a photograph of a woman in a laboratory setting, with no glasses on, squinting through a microscope with her right eye, and with her left eye closed.
Test-takers here: (a) She’s speaking into a microphone.
(b) She’s putting on her glasses.
(c) She has both eyes open.
(d) She’s using a microscope.

53. Chart-filling Test-takers hear:
Now you will hear information about Lucy’s daily schedule. The information will be given twice. The first time just listen carefully. The second time, there will be a pause after each sentence. Fill in Lucy’s blank daily schedule with the correct information. The example has already been filled in.
You will hear: Lucy gets up at eight o’clock every morning except on weekends.
You will fill in the schedule to provide the information.
Now listen to the information about Lucy’s schedule. Remember, you will first hear all the sentences; then you will hear each sentence separately with time to fill in your chart.
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 every day 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.

54. Designing assessment Tasks: extensive Listening
Dictation
Communicative stimulus-response tasks
Authentic listening tasks

55. dictation

57. stimulus-response tasks
Communicative
stimulus-response tasks

58. Dialogue and multiple choice comprehension items

59. The test takers read: 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.
2. When did Lynn’s problem start?
(a) When she saw her doctor.
(b) Before she went to the lake.
(c) After she came home from the lake.

60. Authentic
listening tasks

61. a. Note-taking b. Editing
This is usually done by the students of non-native English users while listening to the classroom lecturers by professors. Their notes will be evaluated in such a way so that it lacks some reliability.
b. Editing

62. d. Interpretive tasks e. Retelling
The tasks extend the stimulus material to a longer stretch of discourse and forces the test-takers to infer a response by answering a few questions in the open-ended form. The potential stimuli can be used are song lyrics, poetry (recite), radio/ tv news reports and oral account of experience.
e. Retelling
The test takers listen to a story or news event and simply retell it or summarize orally or written. In order to show a full comprehension, the test takers require to identify the main idea, purpose and supporting details.

63. Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing
Microskills for
Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing
Each of the four areas of language proficiency involves a variety of microskills. These
skills are often overlooked by teachers as an area of instructional focus; however,
ELLs may not have had opportunities to acquire these skills. They may need direct
instruction and time to use the skills in order to fully participate in the classroom
lessons. Examples of microskills in each area are provided below, although the lists
are by no means comprehensive.

64. Listening Discriminate between the distinctive sounds of English.
Retain chunks of language in short-term memory.
Discriminate between the distinctive sounds of English.
Recognize reduced forms of words.
Process speech at different rates of delivery.
Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other performance variables.
Recognize grammatical word classes (e.g., nouns and verbs), systems (e.g.,tense, agreement, and pluralization), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.

65. Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
Recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, and goals.
From events, ideas, etc. 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.
Develop means of retaining information

66. References
Brown, H.D Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
Fang, x Listening Comprehension in EFL Teaching. Us-china foreign language. 6 (52):
Heaton, J.B Writing English Language Tests (new edition). London: Longman.
O’malley, J.M. & Chamot, A.U Listening Comprehension Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. Applied linguistics. 10 (4):

67. THANK YOU