listening difficulty university of thessaloniki

8/18/2019 Listening Difficulty University of Thessaloniki

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Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

20th International Symposium on Theoretical & Applied Linguistics1! April 2011

Listening Comprehension Difculty:The Learner Perspective

Elizabeth ApostolouPhD CandidateResearch AssistantResearch Centre for English Language Teaching, Testing &Assessment

Uniersit! of Athens


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Conte"t of stud!

Part of PhD thesis aiming at# The investigation of listening comprehensiondi"culty from the perspective of the test taskand the oral te#t$

$ources of data#Phase %analysis of %' (2 level candidates) listening task

performance *item analysis+Phase %% e#amination of L2 learners) perceptions of listeningtask & te#t di"culty *intervie,s & open -uestionnaires+


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Aim of stud!

reveals ,hat 'reek learners .nd

confusing or di"cult in listening taskperformance in /nglish

to gie an insight into ree'learners( perceied tas'

di)culties in a listeningcomprehension test

to gie an insight into ree'learners( perceied tas'

di)culties in a listeningcomprehension test


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Design of the stud!*o+

semi-structured, focused interie+scarried out +ith undergraduatestudents of the .acult! of English$tudies, Uniersit! of Athens


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Design of the stud!/ho

Research sub0ects#

undergraduate students participated in a ,orkshop on

Teaching and Assessing listening

contribute to the continuation ofthe stud! +ith a di1erent groupof sub0ects 2actual 34 leellearners5


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Design of the stud!/hat

3efore the interie+sa listening comprehension test

involving test items derived from the%' (2 level listening comprehensionpast papers$

Test items#a+ ultiplechoice *34+

5+ True36alse37ot Stated *T3637S+c+

4ompletion items


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Design of the stud!#/hat

/hile ta'ing the test# note do,n their di"culties ne#t to test items notes used as stimuli on the day of the

intervie,s

After the end of the test# .ll in a feed5ack -uestionnaire *of a closed type+

a$rate test items and oral te#ts in terms of di"culty

5$evaluate the e8ect of speci.c te#t and taskvaria5les on their performance

.responses used to form the -uestions of eachintervie,


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%nterie+s

Intervie,s carried out on a di8erent day from the test separately ,ith each individual in 'reek

/ach intervie, lasted !09: minutes ,as recorded


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%nterie+ing

Test item di"culties e#plain di"culty ,ith reference to speci.c

test item types

Te#trelated di"culties ela5orate on factors of te#t di"culty

*i$e$; rate of speech; accent; te#t density;etc$+

Their reasoning & thought processes inresponding


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%nterie+ Data Anal!sis

transcri5ed

translated into /nglishanaly


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.indings67C test items285

%tem-related di)culties

>istractors vs$ item di"culty

Q1: ... I thought I heard all three options. They seemed so familiar tome after listening to the text 2%nterie+ee 45

Q2: …all three distractors could be potential responses. In other words, Icould have opted for a, b, or c without hesitation – I mean all three couldbe correct 2%nterie+ee 95:

ole#ical

overlap

Q: …also, many !ords contained in the ans!eroptions !ere heard during the recording2%nterie+ee ;5:

osimilarmeaning


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.indings67C test items2=5

Comprehension Processes a1ecting itemdi)cult!

o te#t

density &processingload

Q,: …yes, the spea&er" mentioned a lot –

much ne! in#ormation – and for a whilefor a few seconds only" (…) and I did nothave time to process all that information.2%nterie+ee ;5

oitem length? processing& memoryload

Q1-: …some .items/ !ere too long andcontained much information (…), so youdidn’t &now !hat you had to remember+2%nterie+ee =5


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.indingsT7.7@$ 285

%tem-related di)culties

o6alse vs$

7ot Stated

Q11: …because the spea&er does not mention itin the way presented in the item, I thought I hadto choose that it was not stated. And I gotcon#used , I mean, I don’t &now what to choose,that the information is false or not stated2%nterie+ee 45:

o7ot statedoption

Q12: …in general, I have di'culty when there is athird option ot !tated" in the item (…) becauseusually my mind can only retain the

in#ormation it listens to+ !o, when something isnot mentioned, I start doubting whether I’velistened to it or not…. %nterie+ee >5

Q1: 0it ot !tated option" confuses you, and you start !ondering: -id the spea&er refer to

it/ 0hat if he did and I didn’t hear it, what if he did1


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.indingsT7.7@$ 245


o 6ocusedlistening &rocessing

load

Q1: …yes, in this case you have to thin(

not +ust listen (…), you also have to bea!are o# !hat is not heard (..). !o, youhave to be very #ocused on the listeningtext to understand all in#ormation, inorder to be able to say that something is

not stated 2%nterie+ee ?5:

# 0 you had to be very #ocused to process everything mentioned in arather #ast rate0 2%nterie+ee 85:


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.indingsCompletion items


%nference4ome up ,ith a

,ord that 5estcorresponds to themeaning of therelevant oral te#t

Q1%: …the fact that I did not listen to theverb, to a speci%c verb2 even though Iunderstood the general meaning of the text I

#ailed to convey it !ith the right verb)but I understood it was about peopleexpecting you to pic& them up from theairport… 2%nterie+ee 45

Paraphrase

4ome up ,ith agrammatically &syntactically

appropriate ,ordthat .ts the given

Q1': I3 In 45 the phrase you used is

syntactically inappropriate+!3 6, yes, I guess thats !hat I heard inthe text I3 7ou heard this phrase/ …"!3 7es. 6, the syntax is di8erent here inthe tas&", but I heard 9his mother is sic&’

I3 Did you read the sentence in thetas&, to see that a change in syntax is


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/hat causes di)cult! to L4 learners

%tem-related factors %n 6C itemso Semantically relevant distractorso Le#ical overlapo Le#ical di"cultyo Item Length

%n T7.7@$ itemso 6alse vs$ 7ot stated %n Completion items

additional di"culties at the level of


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/hat causes di)cult! toL4 learners

Reuired Comprehensionprocesses

%n 6C itemso 6ocused listening for speci.c informationo Inference makingo rocessing load *te#t density & item length+

%n T7.7@$ itemso 6ocused listeningo rocessing load%n Completion itemso Inference making


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Conclusions

Listening is a multidimensionalprocedure and performance on listeningtest tasks re-uires a comple#com5ination of kno,ledge & processingskills *(uck; 2001+$

Listening comprehension in L2 is di"cult

irrespectively of language pro.ciencylevel$


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@e"t phaseB

1+ e#amine actual (2 level learners)perceptions of listening task and te#t

di"culty2open uestionnaires5

2+ com5ine learners) perceptions ,ith itemdi"culty results derived from itemanalysis 2Phase 85


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%mplications

.or testing & assessment#shed light into the aspects of test

design in@uencing candidateperformance

contri5ute to the design of more validtests of listening comprehension

.or pedagog!#help teachers enhance their students)

listening skills


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5li6abeth 7postolouelapostol8enl+uoa+gr

Than' !ou for attention

listening difficulty university of thessaloniki

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