The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Carol A. Chapelle
relevant to linguistic resources, but test developers need to consider how grammar tasks and scoring procedures allow for the capture of information about the resources of communication at varied grain sizes. Research attempting to include the form, meaning, and form‐meaning mapping aspects of linguistic resources in assessments is ongoing. In the meantime, test score users should critically examine the meaning of scores obtained on assessments claimed to assess grammar.
SEE ALSO: Construction Grammar; Systemic Functional Linguistics; Task‐Based Language Assessment
References
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19 Lado, R. (1961). Language testing. New York, NY: McGraw‐Hill.
20 Liao, Y.‐F. A. (2009). Construct validation study of the GEPT reading and listening sections: Re‐examining the models of L2 reading and listening abilities and their relations to lexico‐grammatical knowledge (Unpublished dissertation). Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY.
21 Purpura, J. E. (2004). Assessing grammar. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
22 Purpura, J. E. (2016). Assessing meaning. In E. Shohamy & L. Or (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education. Vol. 7: Language testing and assessment (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978‐3‐319‐02326‐7_1‐1
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Note
1 Based in part on J. E. Purpura (2012). Assessment of grammar. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. John Wiley & Sons Inc., with permission.
Assessment of Listening
GARY J. OCKEY
Listening is important for in‐person communication, with estimates that it accounts for more than 45% of the time spent communicating (Feyten, 1991). Listening continues to become more important in virtual environments with the increase of communication through such technologies as FaceTime, Second Life, and Skype. It follows that teaching and assessing the listening skill of second language learners is essential. Unfortunately, the assessment of second language listening comprehension has attracted little research attention (Buck, 2018) and, as a result, understanding of how to best assess it is limited.
Listening Processes
Current conceptions of the listening process maintain that comprehension results from the interaction of numerous sources of information, including the acoustic input and other relevant contextual information. The mind simultaneously processes these incoming stimuli and other information such as linguistic and world knowledge already present in the mind. Listening comprehension is a dynamic process, which continues for as long as new information is made available from any of these sources (Gruba, 1999; Buck, 2001).
Listening is multidimensional but is comprised of related discrete lower‐level ability components. While agreement on a comprehensive list of these components has not been reached (nor does there exist an agreed‐upon theory of how these components operate with each other), some research indicates that listening ability may include three lower‐level abilities: the abilities to understand global information, to comprehend specific details, and to draw inferences from implicit information (Min‐Young, 2008). Test developers typically draw upon these in defining a listening construct in the first stages of test development.
Factors Affecting Listening
Professionals take into account factors that affect listening comprehension when they design and use listening assessments. One of these factors is rate of speech (Brindley & Slatyer, 2002). When listeners comprehend authentic oral communication, they process a large amount of information very rapidly, which can result in cognitive overload or push working memory beyond its capacity. This means that listeners may not be able to understand input at faster speeds which can, however, be processed at slower speeds. Research also indicates that background knowledge about the topic is important for the message to be comprehended. Test takers with background knowledge on a topic related to the input are generally advantaged (Jensen & Hansen,