Chapter 6:
Listening comprehension tests
I. General
Careful selected practice material
an effective way of developing listening skill
used for testing listening comprehension
an awareness of ways in which the spoken
language differs from the written language is
crucially important in testing listening
comprehension skills
some conventional features such as repetition,
hesitation and grammatical patterns are
essential for the understanding of spoken
English
the tape recorder is the only way of ensuring
compete uniformity of presentation and thus a
high degree of reliability
auditory tests are divided into two broad
categories: (i) tests of phoneme discrimination
and of sensitivity to stress and intonation, and (ii)
tests of listening comprehension
II. Phoneme discrimination tests
Type 1: The test consists of a picture,
accompanied by three or four words spoken by the
examiner in person or tape.
Type 2: The testees hear three sentences and
have to indicate which are the same and which are
different.
Type 3: Testees are required to choose the
written word which corresponds to the spoken
word.
Notes
These itemsused for diagnostic testing purposes,
enabling the teacher to concentrate later on specific
pronunciation
Theyuseful when candidates having the same
L1 background & when a contrastive analysis of L1
& L2 can be used.
The ability to discriminate between certain
phonemes very difficult for native speakers.