College EFL teachers' perspectives on listening assessment and summarization for a specific task

Abstract

Listening assessment has been a neglected area of research and teaching in the past due to difficulties such as separating input comprehension from output ability, rater variability, and text ambiguity. The goal of this study was to develop a norm-referenced and holistic model summary by surveying Taiwanese English listening and speaking teachers and then comparing that model summary to listening summaries created by non-expert college age native speakers. Eleven Taiwanese college English listening and speaking teachers were surveyed to determine i) their general listening assessment preferences and ii) how they would score a specific listening task, including selecting the key main ideas, key vocabulary, and drafting a model summary. For comparison purposes, the listening task was administered to 10 college-age native speakers of English and they were asked to orally construct a summary of the listening task. The results showed that the teachers were consistent in their listening assessment preferences and also in their preferred assessment choices for a specific listening task. The native-speaker produced summaries did not converge on a single model for the same listening task. © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.