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 items used for diagnostic testing purposes,
enabling the teacher to concentrate later on specific
pronunciation
They useful 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.