Videotaped fonnatted test: usefulness for measuring academic lecture listening ability of learners of English as a second language

Abstract

<p>ESL teachers, curriculum writers, and test developers of recent decades have been enthusiastic to reflect authentic 'target language use' (TLU) situations in the materials they produce. The recent trend of language testing is also towards testing language use in a wider communicative sense. In second language (L2) listening comprehension testing, in contrast, there has been very little empirical work carried out to investigate the value of the authentic factors such as kinesics. schemata or speech modifications. Instead, audiotape formatted multiple choice listening tests (e.g., in the TOEFL, 1993) have been widely used for selection and placement purposes to determine whether new international students have sufficient listening abilities to study at academic settings in the North America. The lack of authentic factors in such norm-referenced tests (NRTs) raises the question of how test performance is affected by listening tasks which lack the variety of clues that normally help U listeners to infer meanings, for example, contextual information related to nonverbal and environmental clues.</p>