ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. Various techniques for assessing student listening ability. You will be able to: 1. Design effective listening assessments for your students.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute ASSESSING LISTENING On the surface, assessing student listening ability looks straightforward. Students listen to a text and then answer questions about the text. However, it is not that simple; there are decisions to be made when designing a listening test:  How long will the listening text(s) be?  Will an audio or an audiovisual text be used?  How many speakers will be in the text (one, two, three or more)?  What accent(s) will the speakers have?  Will discrete questions or integrated questions be used, or both?  For discrete questions, which types of questions will be used: true/false, multiple choice, matching, fill-in-the-blanks, short answer?  What will the discrete questions test: gist/main idea, content detail, language?

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute HOW LONG WILL THE LISTENING TEXT(S) BE? A listening text can range from 30 seconds up to about 3 minutes. Listening texts for assessments should not exceed 3 minutes in length, unless you are testing student note taking skills or listening retention skills. Use shorter texts to test student ability to quickly understand what is going on in a situation and pick out one or two details. Use longer texts to test their ability to understand more complex communication. The level of the class also factors into how long your listening text is; beginner students should have shorter texts, while higher level students can handle longer texts.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute WILL YOU USE AN AUDIO TEXT OR AN AUDIOVISUAL TEXT? Listening tests traditionally involve only an audio text or an audio text and a still picture. However, with advances in technology that allow us to start and stop audiovisual text exactly where we want to, audiovisual text has also become an option. The advantage to audiovisual text is that it more realistically mimics an authentic situation. In real oral communication, we have visual cues to go along with our verbal communication, (except in telephone calls). However, you may want to purely isolate your students’ listening ability and stick to audio alone.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute HOW MANY SPEAKERS WILL BE IN THE TEXT? A single speaker in the text, or a monologue, allows students to focus clearly on words and content, rather than on distinguishing between or among speakers. The real-life situation represented by a single speaker is a presentation, lecture, or debate. Multiple speakers in a text force students to use their listening skills to interpret the relationship between or among speakers, to understand the emotion in words and to understand the dynamics of the conversation. A multiple-speaker listening text represents real-life conversation and communication. The choice on the number of speakers will therefore depend upon what type of skill is being assessed.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute WHAT ACCENT(S) WILL THE SPEAKERS HAVE? In the past, the majority of listening texts used standard British or American accents. This has changed, however. More and more listening texts are now making use of non-standard accents (non-native speakers, non-standard British and American speakers, Australian and New Zealand speakers), because this is how English is spoken in the real world. Learners of English today need to be able to understand a wide variety of accents, because this is what they will encounter when they use their English outside the classroom. For beginner students, keeping to a clear, standard accent is perhaps best, in order to give them some confidence with their listening. However, with higher level students, you want to assess their ability to process a number of different accents.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute WILL YOU USE DISCRETE QUESTIONS, INTEGRATED QUESTIONS OR BOTH? Discrete questions test student understanding of a specific aspect of the listening text, specifically the main idea or gist, content detail or target language. Gist questions may include the location of the conversation, the mood or attitude of the speaker, the general opinion of the speaker, or the intention of the speaker. Content detail questions may include objects, people, dates, numbers, or places mentioned in the text. Target language questions may ask students to write all of the examples of a specific language structure that they heard. Discrete questions are generally easy to assess. WHICH TYPES OF DISCRETE QUESTIONS WILL YOU USE? You have a number of choices with discrete questions, including: true/false, multiple choice, matching, fill-in-the-blanks, complete a table or chart, and short answer. These all work well and are easy to mark.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Integrated questions require students to integrate information from the listening text with their personal knowledge, experience or opinion, and express this productively, either in writing or speaking. These test questions are more difficult for students, but more closely mimic the processing that we do with what we hear in real life. *An important issue to consider is whether you are assessing receptive listening skills or productive writing or speaking skills.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute CONCLUSION To most effectively assess student listening ability, the key is to achieve a balance among all of the above factors:  Use multiple listening texts in your test.  Use texts of varying lengths.  Use texts with a variety of accents and speaker numbers.  Use a variety of question types - some discrete and some integrated.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute DISCRETE VERSUS INTEGRATED QUESTIONS  What are the advantages and disadvantages of using discrete questions for testing listening?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of using integrated questions for testing listening?

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete task journal questions 2 and 3 and submit via to or (preferred), or print and hand