strategies, test-taking strategies also include test-manage strategies which are
strategies for“responding meaningfully to test items and tasks”(Cohen 2012: 263)
and test-wiseness strategies involving“using knowledge of testing formats and
other peripheral information to answer test items without going through the
expected cognitive processes”(Cohen 2012: 264). In the process of improving
validity of tests, test-designers have tried to restrict or avoid test-takers’
test-wiseness strategies. A very important rationale behind investigation into
test-taking strategies is tofind out to what extent the test-takers’reported processes
fit what was tested (Cohen 2012). As a quick reflection on the history of studies on
test-taking strategies, two issues become critical:
- Impact of test format on test-taking strategies. For example, inferences from
options of MCQ questions might be considered construct-irrelevant. - Scientific methodology to elicit genuine test-taking strategies that really reflect
test-takers’cognitive processes.
Regarding these two critical issues, impact of test format will be discussed in
Sect.3.3. So far, a frequently used research method to investigate test-taking
strategies is the use of verbal report (e.g., Goh 2002, Cohen 2006, Swain et al.
2009). This research method will be further discussed in Chap. 6.
Similarly, in the testing condition of academic listening comprehension, different
sets of cognitive strategies assigned to the particular task are worth investigation.
The overlap of theoretical inferences and empirical results proves that the study
probing into test takers’test-taking strategies can help us understand the cognitive
nature of the academic listening process and therefore, it should be considered an
indispensable part of test-takers’academic listening performance. A well-accepted
taxonomy of listening strategies is again the classification of cognitive strategies
and metacognitive strategies. Here, cognitive strategies refer to those“employed
during comprehension processes, storing and memory processes and using and
retrieval processes” while metacognitive strategies are those “conscious or
unconscious mental activities that perform an executive function in the management
of cognitive strategies”(Buck 2001: 104). Nevertheless, Buck’s taxonomy just
provides a rather big picture. A more handy taxonomy of listening strategies was
generated by Goh (2002) based on students’verbal reports. She managed to assign
all the test-takers’introspective protocols to their corresponding strategies and listed
altogether 44 listening tactics.
The reason why we study test-taking strategies also lies in the argument that
differences of learner performance can be attributed to their different strategy
employment. According to Dreyer and Oxford (1996), language strategies could be
an important variable accounting for learner discrepancy besides natural talent in
language learning. In Goh’s (2002) exploration of listening comprehension tactics
and their interaction patterns, it was found that although students of different levels
used many similar strategies, the higher level listeners still demonstrated more
effective use of both cognitive and metacognitive tactics.
3.2 The Competence-Based Construct 21