KPG research
Listening comprehension in language proficiency tests: a study of efl test- takers’ strategy based performance in listening testing situations
Eleni Charalampopoulou
PhD Thesis
Faculty of English Language and Literature
School of Philosophy
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
The present research is aiming at investigating the EFL learners’ listening comprehension strategies, employed for the completion of listening tasks as these are found in the listening module of language proficiency tests. Listening comprehension will be examined through the scope of testing situations and strategic choices on the part of EFL test-takers. The focus of the research analysis will be on what ways the listening ‘behaviour’ of EFL candidates appears to interact with their listening performance, their strategy use and instruction along with task characteristics. In order to account for specific task types, a solid basis of standardised language proficiency tests is needed. The present study will attempt to base research on the KPG language proficiency tests. The basic hypothesis of the present study is that strategy use is a learned practice and that EFL test takers can be actually trained to use particular strategies. Although several studies have investigated the relationship between the use of specific strategies and test performance (Cohen et al., 1996), the corpus of such data is still limited. Few studies have documented that the frequent use of particular strategies is directly associated with an increase in score in the context of specific task types. By defining what each listening task involves the listener into, and what each listener is expected to be able to do with this particular listening task, it is believed that EFL candidates will be really facilitated in being able to deal successfully with listening situations not only in testing conditions but in real life as well. There is a growing interest in analyzing test taking from a strategic perspective because such information could help us understand what test items are really testing, what difficulties the test takers encounter (Buck,1990; Yi’an, 1998) and how they can overcome them.