ABSTRACT

Effective listening comprehension skills are an important prerequisite for the academic success of primary school students. However, the assessment of listening skills in the instructional language appears to have received only scant attention in the literature. Therefore, the goal of the present study was twofold. Firstly, a comprehensive listening test was developed and different aspects of construct validity supporting the use of the listening test were explored. The listening test was administered to 1001 sixth-grade primary school students in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Next, the test items were controlled for item difficulty and discrimination, dimensionality, model-data fit, local item independence, monotonicity, and gender differential item functioning. The final listening test consisted of 24 multiple-choice and open-ended test items. Secondly, the listening test was used to identify differences between students’ listening skills based on gender and home language. The results indicate that gender was not significantly related to listening comprehension skills, but L1 Dutch-speaking students significantly outperformed L2 Dutch-speaking students. This study also covers possible further fine-tuning of the instrument.

摘要

有效的听力理解能力是小学生学业成功的重要前提。然而，在教学语言中对听力技能的评估似乎在文献中很少受到关注。因此，本研究的目标是双重的。首先，开发了一个综合听力测试，并探索了支持听力测试使用的结构效度的不同方面。听力测试是针对比利时荷兰语区法兰德斯的 1001 名六年级小学生进行的。接下来，测试项目针对项目难度和歧视、维度、模型数据拟合、局部项目独立性、单调性和性别差异项目功能进行控制。最终的听力测试包括 24 个多项选择和开放式测试项目。其次，听力测试用于识别基于性别和家庭语言的学生听力技能之间的差异。结果表明，性别与听力理解技能没有显着相关性，但 L1 荷兰语学生的表现明显优于 L2 荷兰语学生。这项研究还涵盖了对该仪器可能的进一步微调。