Assessing Listening

1. Intensive. Listening for perception of components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of larger stretch of language

2. Responsive. Listening to relatively short stretch of language (a greeting, question, command, etc.) in order to make short response

3. Selective. Processing stretches of discourse such as short monologues for several minutes in order to “scan” for information; ask Ss to listen for specific information (i.e. names, numbers, or grammatical categories)

4. Extensive. Listening to develop top-down, global understanding of spoken language. Extensive performance ranges from listening to lengthy performance to conversation; listening for gist, for main idea, and making inferences are all part of extensive listening

Intensive listening is listening for perception of components (phonemes, words, intonation, discourse markers, etc. of a larger stretch of language.

Responsive listening is listening to a relatively short stretch of language (a greeting, question, command, etc. in order to make a short response.

Selective listening is when a student listens to short stretches of discourse such as a short monologue for several minutes in order to scan for information.

Students will listen for specific information such as names, numbers, grammatical categories.

Extensive listening is to listen to develop top-down. Extensive performance of listening is listing to a discourse for a period of time in order to get the gist of something, for main ideas, to make inferences

MICRO- AND MACROSKILLS OF LISTENING

· Microskills = attending to smaller bits and chunks of language in more bottom-up process

· Macroskills = focusing on larger elements involved in top-down approach to listening task

• Microskills examples:
• a. Recognize reduced forms of words

b. Distinguish word boundaries

c. Process speech at different rates of delivery

Macroskills examples:

• a. Distinguish between literal
• and applied meanings

• b. Use body language and
• nonverbal clues to decipher meaning

• After determining objectives, you can begin designing
• assessment tasks

Recognizing Phonological and Morphological Elements

a. Assessment involves recognition of phonological and morphological elements

• b. Phonemic pair examples:
• -- Consonants
• -- Vowels

• c. Morphological pair examples:
• -- -ed endings
• -- Stress pattern

• Paraphrase Recognition
• Assessing words, phrases, and sentences
• Examples:
• -- Sentence paraphrase
• -- Dialogue paraphrase

Responsive listening is when students have to respond to a listening. Specifically an


· Appropriate response to a question

· Open-ended response to a question

· Test-taker listens limited quantity of aural input and must discern within some specific information

1. Give a listening cloze

• 2. Information transfer
• Examples:
• -- Multiple-picture-cued selection
• -- Chart filling

3. Create sentence repetition

· Dictation

· Communicative Stimulus-Response Tasks

· Authentic Listening Tasks