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5B - Critical Review

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Glory Euodia 5B1
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25 views2 pages

5B - Critical Review

Uploaded by

Glory Euodia 5B1
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Name: Glory Euodia

ID: 1804664
Class: 5B1
Course: Evaluasi Pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris

Information Transfer in Selective Listening: A Critical Review

When developing a listening test item, a test developer needs to consider the objective
of the test, which can be reflected through the appropriate type of listening performance
(Brown, 2004). There are four basic types of listening performance, namely intensive
listening, responsive listening, selective listening, and extensive listening. Each type of
listening performance has its own particular assessment task. This critical review focuses on
information transfer as an assessment task in assessing selective listening performance as
explained in Brown’s book, “Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices”.
In his book, Brown suggested that selective listening deals with the test takers’ ability
to pick up specific information from the chosen aural text. The aural text used in this type of
listening performance is usually long and is set in a certain context, such as an audio of a
news broadcast. Selective listening performance can be assessed through a task called
information transfer, among other tasks. Information transfer is a type of task in which the
test takers are asked to transfer the processed information they got from the listening activity
into a ‘visual representation’. The visual representation may come in a form of diagram,
picture-cued items, schedule, or even a map.
Information transfer has a few advantages. First, it is practical in terms of time
efficiency. Test takers do not need to write lengthy texts because the task only require short
to no written answers. Hughes (2003) claimed that the task’s requirement made minimal
demands of productive skills. Another research done by Riabtseva, et al. (2004) supported
Hughes’ claim. They implied that by requiring non-verbal answers, the task’s measurement
will not be ‘muddied’ by the need to incorporate writing to record the test takers’ answers.
Riabtseva, et al. (2004) also suggested that information transfer assessment tasks have
high face validity. This is due to its suitability in understanding processes, classification, and
narrative sequence. The task’s suitability to assess certain comprehension made the task to
appear more realistic and interesting. It mirrors real-life activities which the test takers can
relate to. Based on my previous experiences with information transfer tasks, the tasks do
introduce learners to a set of vocabularies that are usually used in daily activities.
However, the information transfer task possesses a particular disadvantage. According
to Riabtseva, et al. (2004), the task is prone to certain types of bias. For example, the task
may be hard for some science students because they are not familiar with non-verbal items.
Instead, they depend heavily on written responses and tasks. Therefore, test developers need
to consider whether the test takers might encounter difficulties in doing this type of task or
not.
One of the issues that test developers need to pay attention to in developing a listening
test item is the type of assessment task being used. When assessing selective listening
comprehension, the information transfer task can be of good use. The task can take many
forms, is time efficient, and it only has a slight disadvantage which can be avoided through
close examination in the development process.

References:

Brown, H. D. (2004). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices (1st ed.) [E-

book]. Longman.

https://books.google.co.id/books/about/Language_Assessment.html?

id=NqglAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y

Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for language teachers (2nd ed.) [E-book]. Cambridge University

Press. https://books.google.co.id/books/about/Testing_for_Language_Teachers.html?

id=lqZyljBAEOMC&redir_esc=y#:~:text=Testing%20for%20Language%20Teachers

%20-%20Arthur%20Hughes%20-,on%20common%20test%20techniques%20and

%20testing%20overall%20ability.

Riabtseva, E. V., Gvozdeva, A. A., & Tsilenko, L. P. (2004). Advantages and disadvantages

of testing foreign language ability. Journal of TSTU, 10(4), 1144–1149.

http://vestnik.tstu.ru/rus/t_10/pdf/10_4_908.pdf

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