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Chapter 6 - Assessing Listening-1

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Chapter 6 - Assessing Listening-1

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116 In earlier chapters, a number of foundational principles of language assessment were introduced. Concepts like practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, wash- back, direct and indirect testing, and formative and summative assessment are by now part of your vocabulary. You have become acquainted with some tools for eval- uating a “good” test, examined procedures for designing a classroom test, and explored the complex process of creating different kinds of test items. You have begun to absorh the intricate psychometric, educational, and political issues that intertwine in the world of standardized and standards-based testing. Now our focus will shift away from the standardized testing juggernaut to the level at which you will usually work: the day-to-day classroom assessment of lis- tening, speaking, reading, and writing, Since this is the level at which you will most frequently have the opportunity to apply principles of assessment, the next four chapters of this book will provide guidelines and hands-on practice in testing within a curriculum of English as a second or foreign language. But first, two important caveats. The fact that the four language skills are dis- cussed in four separate chapters should in no way predispose you to think that those skills are or should be assessed in isolation. Every ‘TESOL professional (see TBP Chapter 15) will tell you that the integration of skills is of paramount impor- tance in language learning. Likewise, assessment is more authentic and provides more washback when skills are integrated. Nevertheless, the skills are treated inde- pendently here in order to identify principles, test types, tasks, and issues associated with each one. Second, you may already have scanned through this book to look for a chapter on assessing grammar and vocabulary, or something in the way of a focus on form in assessment, The treatment of form-focused assessment is not relegated to a sep- arate chapter here for a very distinct reason: there is no such thing as a test of grammar or vocabulary that does not invoke one or more of the separate skills of listening, speaking, reading, or writing! It’s not uncommon to find little “grammar tests” and “vocabulary tests” in textbooks, and these may be perfectly useful instru- ments, But responses on these quizzes are usually written, with multiple-choice selection or fill-in-the-blank items, In this book, we treat the various linguistic forms 6 coApreR 6 Assessing Listening 11 (phonology, morphology, lexicon, grammar, and discourse) within the context of ski areas, That way, we don’t perpetuate the myth that grammar and vocabulary and othe linguistic forms can somehow be disassociated from a mode of performance, OBSERVING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE FOUR SKILLS Before focusing on listening itself, think about the two interacting concepts of per formance and observation. All language users perform the acts of listening speaking, reading, and writing They of course rely on their underlying competencs in order to accomplish these performances. When you propose to assess someone’ ability in one or a combination of the four skills, you assess that person’s compe bent tence, but you observe the person's performance. Sometimes the performance doe tash- not indicate true competence: a bad night’s rest, illness, an emotional distraction Eby test anxiety, 1 memory block, or other studentrelated reliability Eactors could affec eval performance, thereby providing an unreliable measure of actual competence. and So, one important principle for assessing a learner's competence is to conside: have the fullibility of the results of a single performance, such as that produced in a test that As with any attempt at measurement. it is your obligation as a teacher to triangu Jate your measurements: consider at least two (or more) performances and/or con b the texts before drawing a conclusion. That could take the form of one or more of the Elis following designs: most four + several tests that are combined to form an assessment ithin + a single test with multiple test tasks to account for learning styles and per formance variables b dis + in-class and extra-class graded work : + alternative forms of assessment (€-g., journal, portfolio, conference, observa tion, self-assessment, peerassessment). Multiple measures will always give you a more reliable and valid assessment than a single measure. A second principle is one that we teachers often forget. We must rely as much as possible on observable performance in our assessments of students. Observable means being able to see or hear the performance of the learner (the senses of touch, taste ,and smell don’t apply very often to language testing!) What, then, is observable among the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing? Table 6.1 offers an answer. Isn't it interesting that in the case of the receptive skills, we can observe nei- ther the process of performing nor a product? I can hear your argument already: “But I can see that she’s listening because she's nodding her head and frowning and smiling and asking relevant questions” Well, you're not observing the lis- boice tening performance; you're observing the resu/t of the listening, You can no more fers ‘observe listening (or reading) than you can see the wind blowing. The process of ———————— T1B carrer 6 Assessing Listening Table 6.1. Observable pertormance of the four skills Can the teacher directly observe the process? the product? Listening No. No. Speaking Yes No* Reading No No Yes Yes “Except in the case of an audio or video recording that presetves the output. the listening performance itself is the i#vistble, inaudible process of internal izing meaning from the auditory signals being transmitted to the ear and brain Or you may argue that the product of listening is a spoken or written response from the student that indicates correct (or incorrect) auditory processing. Again the product of listening and reading is not the spoken or written response. The product is within the structure of the brain, and until teachers carry with them little portable MRI scanners to detect meaningful intake, it is impossible w observe the product. You observe only the result of the meaningful input in the form of spoken or written output, just as you observe the result of the wind by noticing trees waving back and forth. The productive skills of speaking and writing allow us to hear and see the process as it is performed. Writing gives a permanent product in the form of = written piece. But unless you have recorded speech, there is no permanent obser able product for speaking performance because all those words you just heard have vanished from your perception and (you hope) have been transformed into mez= ingful intake somewhere in your brain. Receptive skills, then, are clearly the more enigmatic of the two modes of pe= formance. You cannot observe the actual act of listening or reading, nor can you se= or hear an actual product! You can observe learners only while they are listening = reading. The upshot is that all assessment of listening and reading must be made o= the basis of observing the test-taker’s speaking or writing (or nonverbal response and not on the listening or reading itself, So, all assessment of receptive peri mance must be made by inference! How discouraging, right? Well, not necessarily. We have developed reasonai good assessment tasks to make the necessary jump, through the process of inf= ence, from unobservable reception to a conclusion about comprehension comp tence. And all this is a good reminder of the importance not just of triangulation of the potential fragility of the assessment of comprehension ability: The actual formance is made “behind the scenes,’ and those of us who propose to make able assessments of receptive performance need to be on our guard. GHANTER 6 Assessing Listening 119 THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING Listening has often played second fiddle to its counterpart, speaking. In the stan- dardized testing industry, a number of separate oral production tests are available Test of Spoken English, Oral Proficiency Inventory, and PhonePass®, to name several that are described Chapter 7 of this book), but it is rare to find just a listening test One reason for this emphasis is that listening is often implied as a component of speaking. How could you speak a language without also listening? In addition, the overtly observable nature of speaking renders it more empirically measurable then listening. But perhaps a deeper cause lies in universal biases toward speaking. A good speaker is often (unwisely) valued more highly than a good listener. To deter- mine if someone is a proficient user of a language, people customarily ask,“Do you speak Spanish?" People rarely ask,"Do you understand and speak Spanish?” Every teacher of language knows that one’s oral production ability—other than monologues, specches, reading aloud, and the like—is only as good as one’s listening comprehension ability. But of even further impact is the likelihood that input in the auraloral mode accounts for a large proportion of successfull language acquisition Ina typical day, we do measurably more listening than speaking (with the exception of one or two of your friends who may be nonstop chatterboxes!).Whether in the workplace, educational, or home contexts, aural comprehension far outstrips oral production in quantifiable terms of time, number of words, effort, and attention, We therefore need to pay close atfention to listening as 2 mode of performance for assessment in the classroom. In this chapter, we will begin with basic principles and types of listening, then move to a survey of tasks that can be used to assess listening. (For a review of issues in teaching listening, you may want to read Chapter 16 of TBF) BASIC TYPES OF LISTENING As with all effective tests, designing appropriate assessment tasks in listening begins with the specification of objectives, or criteria. Those objectives may be classified in terms of several types of listening performance. Think about what you do when you listen, Literally in nanoseconds, the following processes flash through your brain: 1. You recognize speech sounds and hold a temporary “imprint” of them in short-term memory, 2. You simultaneously determine the type of speech event (monologue, interper- sonal dialogue, transactional dialogue) that is being processed and attend to its context (who the speaker is, location, purpose) and the content of the message. 3. You use (bottom-up) linguistic decoding skills and/or (top

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