ASSESSING SKILLS LISTENING PURPOSES The Wise Owl

ASSESSING SKILLS: LISTENING: PURPOSES

The Wise Owl There was an old owl who lived in an oak, The more he heard, the less he spoke; The less he spoke, the more he heard. Oh, if men were all like that wise bird! (Ogdan Nash)

The Importance of Listening 45 percent of our time communicating is spent listening(Gilman & Moody 1984) Listening is a critical receptive skill (“input”) that typically precedes productive ability (“output”)

What is listening is a two-stage process involving, in the first instance, the extraction of basic information followed by the use of that language for a communicative purpose (Buck, 2001: 510).

Features of listening Active: The listener has to remake the speaker’s intended meaning. Time-constrained: The input is not under the control of the listener Transitory: No text to refer back to. The listener has to carry forward a recall of what has been said in his/her mind. Oral: The input contains features which reflect the way speech is produced

top-down or bottom-up processing speech perception word recognition sentence processing construct the literal meaning of the sentence hold the inforamtion in short-term memory recognize cohesive devices in discourse infer the implied meaning and intention predict what is to be said decide how to respond

Bottom-up approach to listening It sees comprehension as a matter of listeners first decoding the smallest elements of what they hear – the sounds. These sounds are then combined and the individual words are decoded. The words are then combined into sentences and the listener works out the meaning. To this will be added recognition of features such as intonation and so on, until we finally reach the non-linguistic content. Rumelhart and Ortony (1977)

The top-down approach starts from the opposite end : it sees understanding as starting from the listener’s background knowledge of the non-linguistic context and of working down towards the individual sounds. Listeners will actively interpret what they hear in terms of their understanding of the situation and the world in general. Mc. Kenzy brought me another present today. It was too late to save it so I buried it in the garden. I think I’m going to have to put a bell round his neck.

Listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up processing, but an interactive, interpretive process where listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages.

What makes listening difficult? phonological modification clustering reduced forms/redundancy colloquial speech and accents prosodic features speech rate performance variables discourse structure

phonological modification Highly variable. The forms taken by phonemes and words vary greatly from citation forms. There is nothing like the standardised spelling system of reading. They also depend on gender, age, shape and size of vocal tract.

clustering In spoken language due to memory limitations and our predispositions for chunking, or clustering, we break down speech into smaller groups of words. In teaching listening comprehension, therefore, you need to help students to pick up manageable clusters of words (H. D. Brown).

Reduced forms /redundancy phonological morphological (contractions like I‟ll); syntactic (elliptical forms like When will you be back? Tomorrow, maybe); pragmatic (Mom! Phone!) re-phrasings repetitions elaborations insertions

Accents and colloquial speech Ø Ø Ø standard GB; standard US/Aus. NZ; Non-standard; L 2 accent

prosodic features Prosody the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast.

speech rate In general older people have a slower speech males tend to speak slightly faster than females the effect of L 1 (native language) on L 2 (second language) speaking rate is L 1 dependent.

Performance variables hesitations false starts pauses corrections

Types of classroom listening skills Reactive (listen and repeat) Intensive (listen for specific sounds, discourse markers, intonation patterns, etc. ) Responsive (listen and respond –briefly) Selective (listen for particular items in a longer stretch of discourse) Extensive (listen for global comprehension) Interactive (authentic communication; listening as part of discussion, conversation, debate, etc. )

Principles for teaching listening Include both bottom-up and top-down listening Include local culture and preexisting schema Use authentic language and contexts Appeal to students’ intrinsic motivation Highlight relevance to real-life needs Consider how students will respond Teach listening strategies

Cognitive validity raises the question of whether the cognitive processes in which test -takers engage during a test of language skills can be said to correspond to those which expert users of the L 2 would employ in real-world event. Cognitive validity has special importance in the case of high-stakes tests which are used to predict behaviour in an academic or professional context or as an immigrant member of an L 1 speaking community. University of Bedfordshire 12/02/2018 21

‘Authenticity’ It is clearly good to use recordings that are as close as possible to natural everyday speech. But a test designer needs to think carefully about the criteria to be followed. ‘Authentic’ is not necessarily equivalent to informal. There are some formal listening conditions which provide useful material: job interviews, discussions, lectures. An important consideration is: What kind of speech will the test takers be exposed to: informal everyday – broadcast – professional/academic? Especially important in some tests is the naturalness of the delivery. Are there: natural planning pauses – hesitations – relatively short utterances - lexical chunks etc. ? University of Bedfordshire 12/02/2018 22

Teach listening strategies Predicting Inferring Monitoring Clarifying Responding Evaluating

Purposes of assessing listening comprehension listening is found in most general proficiency tests, academic tests, tests of language for business purposes Ø In achievement tests it is used to evaluate the achievements and to encourage students to practise listening Ø Listening is widely used in placement and diagnostic testing Ø

measurement principles of assessing listening reliability validity fairness

Format Most of the traditional test formats are open to question because of the extent to which they are dependent upon the reading skill. This is especially true of MCQ. Traditional formats require test takers to map from a statement on the page to one that they hear. This matching and checking very rarely occurs in realworld listening. Pre-set questions tell test takers a great deal of what they are about to hear. This encourages test-wise strategies based upon anticipating what is to come. Test takers exploit the knowledge that items follow the order of the recording. They listen out for words that appear in the items. They tune in and out of the recording, knowing that items will be evenly spaced.