Second Term Final Exams

Last term I changed my oral communication final exams. The exams consisted of five parts: comprehension, response, completion, conversations and short talks. In Part One, Comprehension, students are given a target sentence. They must then choose one of four sentences (a, b, c or d) that has the same meaning as the target sentence. This section is typically used for testing vocabulary and grammar. In Part Two, Response, students are given, alternately, a question or a sentence followed by four possible responses. The students must choose the response that would most logically follow the target sentence. This tests not only comprehension, but critical thinking skills involved in conversation. In Part Three, Completion, students are given a sentence fragment and must then choose one of four possible endings for the fragment. This is used for testing vocabulary, grammar, comprehension, and critical thinking skills in conversation. In Part Four, Conversation, students listen to five conversations. Each conversation has three listening comprehension questions. Some of these questions require general comprehension listening, some require detail listening, some questions call for factual answers, some require inferences. In Part Five, Short Talks, students listen to a short story and answer questions about the story.

In the past, the entire test was listening only. However, this term I decided to put the questions and answers for parts four and five in the test booklet. The reason was that I wanted to more accurately test the students' ability to understand what they were listening to. When the test was listening-only and the questions followed the listening section, in my opinion the students' listening was unfocused because they didn't know what to listen for. As well, in some cases, rather than testing comprehension, I was inadvertently testing their memory of what they heard rather than their ability to understand what they had heard. So this term I made the test more focused and accurate by putting the questions and answers for parts four and five in the test booklet.

For each exercise (one short listening), I gave students approximately fifteen seconds to read the three questions. They then listened to the conversation or short talk. Afterward, I gave the first and second graders approximately one minute, and I gave the third graders approximately forty-five seconds to answer the questions.

I feel that this approach worked very well for several reasons. First, by allowing students to read the questions before listening, I gave the students the opportunity to focus their listening. A large degree of our listening comprehension comes from context, from anticipating what we are about to hear. By allowing students to make inferences about the context by reading the questions, I increase the students' potential to understand what they will listen to. Secondly, by allowing students to read the questions, students no longer have to mentally juggle their memory of the question and their memory of the listening. They can more easily separate the information and focus on the actual content of the listening.

I feel that this change was successful and plan to do this in my future tests. I also plan to give further consideration to how this can be improved in the future.

Date: 2010⁄01⁄05 08:46｜Permalink｜Author：nelp

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