More innovative research methods need to be developed to measure mental
representation of spoken discourses. More empirical research is needed to verify
and substantiate the available cognitive models on listening comprehension. On the
whole, innovative research methods should be implemented in order to usher in
new opportunities for research on other validity components of the LCC
framework.
9.8 Conclusion
In this chapter, we first elaborate on the verified framework for Lecture
Comprehension Construct (LCC), which highlights interaction between the task
domain and competence domain, so the task domain and competence domain as the
key validity components are further discussed. All the research questions are
answered based on triangulation of both quantitative and qualitative data.
Implications for assessing academic listening suggest that the task format as a
structured summary discourse is suitable to assess test-takers’discourse construc-
tion. Implications resulting from the data analysis show that all the test-items should
be material-bound and passage-dependent. Details gaps should aim at test-takers’
lower-level processes such as decoding, lexical search, parsing and meaning at the
word level or lexical chunk level. Key-point gaps should target a higher level of
cognitive processing and test-takers need to be pushed to integrate the relevant
information larger than a lexical chunk. Inference gaps should target test-takers’
meaning-building process and summary gaps should aim at a group of sentences.
Recommendations for academic listening instruction mainly lie in designing of
innovative teaching approaches and materials to strengthen students’skills such as
selection of key information, meaning and discourse construction and paraphrase.
Finally, future research directions including needs analysis in relation to aca-
demic lecture comprehension, comparison of test measures and designing of
innovative research methods are also suggested.
168 9 Conclusion and Recommendations