Testing Listening Comprehension Tests

Abstract

This article is designed to stimulate second-language instructors to evaluate their listening comprehension tests. Are these tests really testing the linguistic components underlying comprehension of an oral message and the ability to understand native speech? Sample test items are given to help the reader determine the exact purpose of commonly-used items. Various weaknesses of typical listening comprehension test items are listed and discussed. Finally, suggestions are made for expanding the types of items and the goals of listening comprehension tests. This article is designed to stimulate reader evaluation of his or her tests. What types of items do you regularly use? How well do they correspond to your course objectives and your classroom activities? What does each test? What must the student do or be able to do in order to complete the item successfully? To what extent does this required student activity correspond to students' listening comprehension needs in a real-language situation? First, let's consider the act of comprehension itself. Understanding an oral communication implies that the listener is able to comprehend the total message being conveyed by the speaker. Under normal circumstances a native speaker comprehends the ideas being expressed without paying conscious attention to the language itself. During the comprehension process he is almost entirely oblivious to the linguistically significant features of the code that enable him to glean the message being conveyed. In fact, focusing on the linguistic elements of the communication tends to slow down comprehension or to impede communication altogether. For this reason, this author's undergraduate English instructor at Indiana University maintained that, from a communicative point of view, correct language is language which calls least attention to itself, i.e., language which promotes maximum communication. The listener comprehends at a rapid rate without concentrating on language itself and without having to expend noticeable amounts of energy. In spite of the relative ease with which the native speaker can receive and process oral messages, the assumption that beginning second-language learners leap directly to this ability level on the basis of some extraordinary desire, motivation, or instruction, is not justified. A skill as complex as listening comprehension depends upon an acquired series of more specialized, supporting bases.