Assessing Listening for Chinese English Learners Developing a Communicative Listening Comprehension Test Suite for CET China Perspectives Series

This book reports in detail the newly developed Communicative Listening Comprehension Test (CLCT) for the National College English Test (CET) of China. Following the principles of communicative testing in general and test construction approach proposed by Bachman and Palmer (1996) in particular, the project develops CLCT for CET-4 and CET-6. The research begins with the construction of frameworks of listening task characteristics and communicative listening ability. Subsequently, based on a survey of Chinese college students' English listening needs and an analysis of listening tasks in influential English listening course books and public tests, CLCT-4 and CLCT-6 test specifications are developed. Finally, sample papers are produced and a series of posteriori studies are conducted to examine the difficulty and usefulness of the newly developed notes-completion task type in two CLCT tests. As an example of successful integration of communicative testing theories and test construction practice, this research provides valuable insights into listening test development for other large-scale tests.

List of figures. List of tables. Acknowledgements. List of AcronymsChapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Communicative Testing: A Critical Review Chapter 3 Real-life Listening: A Multidisciplinary Review Chapter 4 Communicative Listening Assessment: A Theoretical Framework Chapter 5 Listening Needs Analysis Chapter 6 Listening Task Analysis Chapter 7 CLCT Test Specifications Chapter 8 CLCT Test Evaluation Chapter 9 Conclusions Appendices. References. Index

Zhixin Pan is a Ph. D. in linguistics and applied linguistics, and now an associate professor at School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests are language testing and language teaching.