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And we are back … We trust that everyone (in the northern hemisphere) has had a restful and exciting summer break and that everyone (in the southern hemisphere) is looking forward to the warmer weather that’s on its way.
Over the past few weeks we’ve had a couple of conversations about the new Paper 2 in Language B and Language Ab Initio. Debates continue to rage about how to best approach the development of listening skills and reading skills and our Facebook group has some very thoughtful insights from a wide range of classroom practitioners. In this blog entry we’d like to focus though on the sequencing in the new Paper 2 assessment. We’ve been wondering which is more beneficial, or easier, for the student : to first take the Listening Comprehension assessment and then the Reading Comprehension assessment (as they are currently sequenced), or to go through this exercise the other way round … Opinion on this varies and we’d like to offer some food for thought, reflection and comment. The literature suggests that in early childhood listening comprehension develops earlier than reading comprehension – for obvious reasons. From day one the child is exposed to sounds which they soon start imitating and making sense of. Reading comprehension only kicks in once the child is in school and someone teaches them the ABCs of the language. By this time, the child’s aural comprehension is already developed to a great extent. However, by the time the child is in (or near) Grade 8, the two types of comprehension are more or less equally developed (Durrell 1969 – a little bit dated). Might we suggest that, based on our perception and what we know about Listening Comprehension assessments, reading comprehension is easier than listening comprehension ? Some arguments in favour of this statement include : - during a reading comprehension assessment the student has continuous access to the source text and can look at it as many times as they wish. In listening comprehension, once the recording has been played (even three times), it’s gone and there is no going back … - in a typical language acquisition course the student is more often exposed to written text than to aural text (partly due to the dearth of level-relevant listening resources in some languages), and therefore their reading comprehension is practised more regularly - during a reading comprehension assessment the student gets ‘in the target language zone’ for an extended period of time (60 minutes in the case of the IB assessment), whereas the listening assessment is really no more than a couple of minutes, with long pauses in between the recordings - external factors (noise, disturbance, movement etc) are likely to have a bigger impact on the listening assessment than on the reading assessment If we are to assume (and this is indeed an assumption) that for 17 and 18 year-olds’ listening comprehension in a foreign language is more difficult than their reading comprehension, then we may also assume that these students can be negatively affected by a poor performance in the listening assessment when they start their reading assessment a couple of minutes afterwards. Imagine a student who fears that he/she has done poorly in the 45 minutes listening assessment – either because of a lack of understanding of the spoken language, or because of a lack of well-developed examination techniques, and who then faces 60 minutes of reading comprehension. We all know what happens in a sprint when the athlete makes a poor start … Some might argue that one of the main purposes of a language acquisition course is so that the learner can use the acquired language in a realistic setting – the target language cultures. The question then is, does most of our ‘foreign language’ communication take place through reading (and writing) or through listening (and speaking) ? Are all four language skills equally important in the context of practical communication ? So, which arguments do we consider in order to decide which sequence is more beneficial to the student ? Maybe some students find listening easier than reading, whereas others may be of the inverse opinion ? What is certain is that as educators, we will need to dedicate the appropriate amount of time not only to the development of both skills, but also to the training in examination techniques. There are undeniable differences between the two assessments, with the “access to the source” text for an extended period of time being one of the main ones. Leave us a comment to let us know what you think … Source : Donald D. Durrell, Listening Comprehension versus Reading Comprehension, Journal of Reading, Vol. 12, No. 6 (Mar., 1969), pp. 455-460, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40012907?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
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AuthorsWe are practising Language Ab Initio, B and A teachers, examiners and workshop leaders for the International Baccalaureate. We author and publish the “Language Ab Initio Student Workbook”, the various Language Portfolios (for Ab Initio, B and MYP) and the How to Ace Language Ab Initio and Language B series. We are also a language acquisition and mother tongue consultants and tireless advocates for mother tongue entitlement in international education. Beyond our lives as linguists, we travel the world, we publish novels, we practice photography, we play and coach football coach, we write and we read. Archives
September 2019
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