process becomes selective attention instead of discourse construction. Nevertheless,
test-takers might naturally resort to discourse construction if they want to sum-
marize several sentences relevant to the gap. For example, a participant reported in
the TAP:“’cause I heard she said when active learners encounter difficulty, they
will evaluate why they are failed and they will change their behavior. But passive
learners will approach the same manner toward different courses and they will
blame on the professors. So it’s different attitude toward difficulty.”Through
summarizing the relevant information, the participant could clarify the logical order
of idea units and tackle the task with more confidence.
8.5.2.3 Monitoring Process
Test-takers’monitoring process (across 14 sources) also suggests that the task is
highly interactive. There are 12 test-takers reporting checking semantic coherence
(24 references), which is consistent with building coherence in the meaning and
discourse construction process. Obviously contextual coherence is a handy criterion
to judge whether the word/wordsfilled in the blank is/are suitable. Furthermore,
assessing comprehension is also frequently reported, evidenced by the test-takers’
frequent mentioning of“not sure”. Comprehension assessment is mainly the
meta-cognitive awareness of one’s cognitive performance. Around half of the
participants reported their uncertainty of the words to befilled in the blanks, which
also demonstrates the difficulty level of the task.
8.5.2.4 Test-Wiseness Strategies
Task-specific test-wiseness strategies include skipping the difficult items; guess
randomly and predicting the tester’s intention. Test-wiseness strategies are
construct-irrelevant and they are not intended by test-developers. But those
strategies reported by participants only account for a fairly small percentage (only
25 references) and in the test situation, test-wiseness strategies formulated specif-
ically toward the test format are unavoidable. What we need to develop is an
academic listening comprehension test that can minimize the frequency of
test-wiseness strategies and maximize the frequency of cognitive processes focused
on selective attention and meaning and discourse construction.
140 8 Linking Task Demands, Cognitive Processes...