The skill part in the questionnaire adopts Likertfive-point scale and the mean
point of every item ranges from 1 to 5.
The mean score of each item is above 3, which means that there is no negative
response from the teacher participants concerning the possible skills listed in the
questionnaire.
The items of the mean score above 4.20 from the highest to lowest are item 16 of
identifying key points via macro discourse markers, item 11 of identifying the main
idea of the lecture and item 4 of following the lecture speed respectively. To
teachers, identifying key points and the main idea of a lecture, namely, the big
picture of a lecture counts the most. The lowest mean comes from item 3 of
distinguishing accents, because up till now, the accent of speakers in TEM 8
Mini-lecture comprehension task is either of American standard pronunciation or
British Received Pronunciation, known as RP (Dang 2004). There is no other
English variety employed in TEM listening subtests yet and therefore distin-
guishing different accents might not be considered an important skill to be tested by
TEM 8 listening subtest though it is important to follow accents of different English
varieties in the authentic academic setting.
5.5.1.2 Students
230 students from three colleges of Shanghai International Studies University
submitted their printed form of questionnaires and 26 invalid questionnaires were
not put into the computer for data processing. Altogether 204 questionnaires are
valid. Descriptive statistics (see Table5.4) show that the age of student participants
varies from the youngest 19 to the oldest 25 with the mean age of 21.81 years since
they are all junior and senior students in the university. They have learned English
for at least 3 years and 17 years at most, so their average English learning time is
11.9 years, which indicates most of them started learning English from their pri-
mary schools. Amongst the 204 valid cases, 157 are female students accounting for
77% and 47 are male students accounting for 23%.
Concerning the part of students’general perception of the test, students have
given a very high mean of difficulty level of the test, which is 4.18 and they are not
so sure of their answers because the mean certainty level is meagerly 1.95. The
mean score of the students’perception of the test authenticity and validity is 2.68
and 3.17 respectively. Since the general perception part just serves the function to
prepare the students for the main part, i.e. the skill section of the questionnaire, no
further elaboration is needed.
Likewise, the mean score of each item is above 3, which means that there is no
negative response from the student participants concerning the possible skills listed
in the questionnaire. But compared with the teacher questionnaire, there is no item
of the mean score above 4.0.
Comparatively higher mean scores come from items 16, 17 and 18 of identifying
key points via macro discourse markers and items 32–35 of taking effective notes.
To students, these skills are practical if they desire to obtain a satisfactory score of
48 5 Exploring Task Demands of TEM 8 Mini-Lecture...