Chapter 6
Employing the Think-Alound Method
to Explore Listeners’ Test-Taking
Cognitive Processes
6.1 Introduction..........................................
Chapter 6 starts with the research design and data collection procedure of the
qualitative part of the study, which includes the participants, research instruments
and research process in collection of TAPs of test-takers’test-taking cognitive
processes, retelling protocols of the same mini-lectures and the follow-up interview
data. Afterward, test-takers’TAP data while doing the TEM 8 Mini-lecture and
Gap-filling task are reported and analyzed with due attention to the interaction
between task targets (item/gap types) and test-taking cognitive processes.
Chapter 4 reviews the characteristics of TEM 8 Mini-lecture and Gap-filling
task, which is composed of four task targets (gap types):
- gaps that target key points of the mini-lecture;
- gaps that target supporting details;
- gaps that target inferences;
- gaps that target summaries of a group of sentences.
In line with the four task targets, this chapter attempts to answer the research
question on how the task targets of the listen-to-summarize cloze task interact with
test-takers’test-taking cognitive processes.
Chapters 6 and 7 present the results and discussion of the qualitative part of the
current study. Following the discussion of the test-taking cognitive processes in
Chap. 6, Chap. 7 emphasizes analysis of the same participants’retelling protocols
of the same mini-lectures and the relevant interview data. In addition, Chap. 7
presents indispensable complementary data in terms of meaning and discourse
construction during the test-takers’listening stage of the mini-lectures.
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018
H. Wang,Testing Lecture Comprehension Through Listening-to-summarize
Cloze Tasks, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-6202-5_6
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