Assessment of Listening

Abstract

Listening is important for in-person communication with estimates that it accounts for more than 45% of the time spent communicating (Feyten, 1991). Listening continues to become more important in virtual environments with the increase of communication through such technologies as video broadcasting and Skype. It follows that teaching and assessing the listening skill of second language learners is essential. Unfortunately, the assessment of second language listening comprehension has attracted little research attention (Buck, 2001), and as a result, understanding of how to best assess it is limited. Keywords: bilingualism; assessment methods in applied linguistics; computer mediated communication; assessment; multilingualism