Testing Lecture Comprehension Through Listening-to-summarize Cloze Tasks

Levels of processing: This gap summarizes active learners’note-taking quali-
ties, aiming to reach test-takers’higher cognitive processing of discourse con-
struction. But the afore-listed protocols have presented different level of attainment.
On the whole, all of them show evidence of decoding input either from the lecture
or from their notes, like“I heard...”;“I wrote down...”, etc. There’s also clear
evidence of monitoring process, such as“I heard the original words are‘in an
organized way’, but then it already exceeds three-word limit”;“Because at that time
I was thinking that the words beneath the blank also have“ing”form, I think it
might be organizing...”, etc.
On the other hand, there is also discourse construction evidence from the pro-
tocols 3 and 5. This gap requires the test-takers to summarize ways of note-taking.
Actually,“ways”in the plural form indicates that there should be more than one
features of good note-taking. The protocol from the third participant reflects this
hint:“The word in the outline is‘ways’, so I might have missed some information
here.”And the protocol from thefifth participant alludes to more than one features:
“I think comprehensive is the most important word, comprehensive. I think it’sa
key word here. I think the second key word is logic.”These extracts can be
regarded as a trace that reveals participants’attempt to construct the relevant dis-
course. In the original mini-lecture, both key words“comprehensive”and“orga-
nized”are explicated and supported by details, but none of the participants wrote
down both of them.
Differences: We can see these test-takers reached different levels of cognitive
processing. Thefirst participant tried very hard tofit the“ways”in what had been
retained in mind and then failed. Finally, she resorted to her permanent knowledge:
“I wrote down note-taking, and then heard the irrelevant newspaper and chatting...
How to take notes for active learners? Just write down...Seems nothing else here.”
The direct information from her schema is that note-taking is realized by the way of
“writing down”, but obviously, she doubted the simplicity of her answer by
self-reflection:“I don’t know what is meant here by the tester?”She also mentioned

negative

entire class

period

ways of

note-taking

active learners writing

newspaper chatting

Fig. 6.5 Association of idea units in Zhou’s TAP....................

6.6 Results of the Test-Taking TAPs 105