THE IMPACT OF THE ENGLISH LISTENING TEST IN THE HIGH-STAKES NATIONAL ENTRANCE EXAMINATION ON JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS AND TEACHERS

Abstract

Listening is a fundamental language skill that enables language learners to receive information and interact with others. Learners use strategies to facilitate learning, perform tasks, and compensate for gaps in linguistic knowledge. Listening and learning strategies have not received much attention at secondary level in Taiwan until recently. From 2014, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan has made the English listening test a part of the large-scale, nation-wide senior high school entrance examination. As the need for teaching and learning English listening is growing increasingly important, the present study aims to explore to what extent the formal English listening test impacts on the teaching and learning of listening in junior high school. In the study, 311 junior high school students and 12 teachers participated; questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed. Descriptive statistics and one-way MANOVA were used to analyze quantitative data. The findings showed the test impacted learning more than teaching. In particular, cognitive and social strategies for listening were more frequently adopted by the students than rehearsal and paralinguistic inferencing strategies. While the students expected learner-centered and communication-oriented teaching approaches to listening, the junior high school teachers in fact adopted more of a text-oriented or ‘testing’ approach.