Testing Lecture Comprehension Through Listening-to-summarize Cloze Tasks

In another word, teachers strongly believe identifying key points and their rela-
tionship and constructing a macro discourse structure should lay a solid foundation
for the overall lecture comprehension.

5.6.1.2 Students’Perspective

Students believe taking effective notes is the most important (see Fig.5.4), i.e.
note-taking (26.101% of the variance) is the most dominant in the four-factor
structure. We have explained that students obtained thefirsthand experience of the
test itself because they were asked to complete the questionnaire after completing a
TEM 8 simulation test. Therefore, students resort to note-taking and believe
note-taking quality can largely determine theirfinal score, for the gap-filling task is
given after the lecture has been delivered. Students’emphasis on note-taking can be
triangulated with their repetitive mentioning in the TAP data of reading notes as one
of the cognitive processes involved in completing the test.
Discourse construction and note-taking are both important regarding TEM 8
Mini-lecture and Gap-filling task and the significance of these two factors can also
be triangulated with the TAP data. Nevertheless, in the real academic listening
context, discourse construction and note-taking occur simultaneously, it is hard to
determine which is more important. Note-taking is actually the mental discourse
representation and therefore, the effect of discourse construction and note-taking is
interwoven.

Task demands of TEM 8

Mini-lecture & Gap-filling Task

(Student perception)

Factor 4 Discourse

(Macro)

Identify key

points

between main

ideas

Grasp macro

structure

Factor 3 Discourse

(Micro)

Identify micro

markers

Identify

detailed points

Infer links

between

detailed points

Factor 2 Decoding

Decode accent

Decode

acoustic input

Factor 1 Note-taking

Shorthand

Outline notes

Retrieve

information

from notes

to the gaps

Transfer notes

Infer links

Fig. 5.4 Students’factor structure of task demands..................

64 5 Exploring Task Demands of TEM 8 Mini-Lecture...