SELFFormative Language Assessment System

For long, the term ‘compréhension à l’audition’ has encouraged language teachers and testers to focus on the product of listening in the form of answers to questions, instead of trying to identify the processes that make up the skill. The result can be seen in methods that check understanding but do nothing to train learners to listen better. Many of these methods require learners to perform in ways that have very little connection with real-world listening. They also encourage false assumptions about the parallels between listening and reading.

This talk draws upon psycholinguistic research to present a profile of what competent listening entails, whether in a first or a foreign language. The model provides a framework for a much deeper understanding of the problems encountered by language learners. It provides a basis for remedial exercise types that can address those problems. It also enables us to make more informed choices when designing tests of listening – choices relating to the recorded material, to the test method and to the questions asked – and to compare the behaviour elicited by a test with the demands that the listener faces in real life.
 
John Field is Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Processes in Language Learning and Assessment at the CRELLA Research Unit, University of Bedfordshire, UK. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is especially known for his work in second language listening and his Listening in the Language Classroom (Cambridge UP, 2008) has become a standard work in the area. Much of his thinking is supported by a background in psycholinguistics, on which he has also written widely.

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