Listening Recall

5.7 Listening Recall

This test format is specifically applied to testing listening skills. It differs from a dictation that it supplies the students with a printed text. However, the text is given not as the complete script of the tape. Certain words that carry the meaning load are deleted from a passage, and the students after listening to the tape are supposed to insert them. Hence, it could be related to a gap-filling test. Here the cassette is usually played for two times; first, the students listen for information and attempt to insert the missing details. The second time allows them to add what they had failed to understand at the beginning. The author of the paper had not used that as a direct test format but as a while-listening activity during her classes. According to her scrutiny the students with more advanced language abilities were able to comprehend the texts immediately, whereas the weaker students sometimes could not manage to understand the message even listening for the tape for the third time. That again proves the significance of usage of pre-, while and post-listening activities in the language classroom. Weir (ibid.) states that such type of testing involves the students’ short-time memory, which they need to switch while listening to the tape.

According to Weir (ibid.), one of the advantages of listening recall is uncomplicated construction, administration and marking.

Nevertheless, there are several disadvantages, as well. There is a danger, that the students will read the passage before listening to the tape, thus we will not be able to evaluate exactly their listening skills. The author of the current paper had encountered the similar situation, where the teacher warns the students not to read but just listen. However, they start reading immediately after receiving the text, even though the tape record being still turned off.

5.8 Testing Grammar Through Error-recognition Items and Word Formation Tasks

One of the test formats for testing grammar is error-recognition items. Here the teacher writes sentences underlining various words. One of the words is obligatory wrong, and the students have to identify what word is wrong and should be corrected. Heaton (ibid.) introduces a variation of that type, saying that the teacher can supply the students with incorrect sentences asking the students to provide the right variant. This again demands a fairly good knowledge of the subject from the students to differentiate between the right and wrong variants. In that case the error-recognition format could be compared with multiple-choice format and even called a branch of it. Below you can find the example of error-recognition items format:

1.        I can’t come to the phone – I have / I’m having a shower!

2.        I watched/ I was watching TV when suddenly the telephone rang.

3.        I had been waiting/ I had waited in the rain for ages when she finally turned up.

(First certificate Star, Luke Prodromou, p.12)

Further, for testing grammar and language structures we often use word-formation tasks, e.g.:

Making friends and ………people is a gift that some influence

………….people seem to be born with, while for others it luck

is a skill that has to be ……..through practice and acquire

hard work. It is, however, …….to know that most skills, comfort

particularly ………….skill, can be learnt and that it is never society

too late to start improving.

(First certificate Star, Luke Prodromou, p.41)

or

It is frequently used in centralized exams to know the students’ ability to coin new words that displays the students’ advanced level of the language. The students are demanded coining nouns from verbs, adjectives from nouns, etc. This requires certain knowledge of prefixes, suffixes and roots in order to create a necessary word. Word coinage is an inevitable skill for recognizing new word items either.

5.9 Controlled writing

 In order to check the students grammar and writing ability the teacher can use different test formats: transformation, broken sentences, sentence and paragraph completion, form filling, notes and diaries.

According to Heaton (1990:32), transformation deals with re-writing sentences. For example, the students are asked to change a sentence in Active voice into a sentence in Passive voice. To differ the task the teacher can put the required word in brackets at the end of each sentence. The students will need to transform a sentence to fit the word in brackets. Or another example of transformation could be changing the focus of the sentence, e.g.:

1.    Berlin is not an easy city to move about in.

Difficult

It………………………in Berlin.

2.    I wonder if you could open the window.

Could

You couldn’t ………………….

3.    When did you start to learn English?

Been

How…………………….English?

(First certificate Star, Luke Prodromou, and p.40)

Further, he discusses the sentences that are divided into fragments (he calls them broken sentences), and the student’s task is to arrange the words in order to produce correct examples. Thus, the students have to know grammar and syntaxes to make a right sentence with the correct word order. Sometimes the students are asked to alter the words to make grammatically correct sentences, e.g.:

1.    a German/hunting/huge/black dog

2.    a 25-year-old/Opera/tall singer

3.    a brand-new/plastic/shopping/green bag

4.    an English/young/interesting teacher

(First certificate Star, Luke Prodromou, and p.80)

Afterwards, the students can be asked to complete the whole paragraphs, finish dialogues, write diaries using the given information, and fill the form, for example hotel check-in. The author of the paper had used writing a diary in her 8^th form, when the learners had to write the diary of captain’s wife whose husband disappeared in the sea. They also had to write the diary of the captain himself before the catastrophe. The students liked the task immensely.