Research On The Factors Affecting Test Performance In Efl Listening Tests: Exploring The Interactions Between Test Task Characteristics And Chinese Learners' Test-taker Characteristics

This dissertation investigated the relative contributions of test task characteristics and test-taker characteristics to English as a foreign language (EFL) listening test performance, and the interrelationships among these variables. The following research questions were addressed:1. What are the main task characteristics of EFL listening tests?2. Do candidates exhibit differential levels of performance on listening tests with different task characteristics? If so, can the differential performance be attributable to some specific test task characteristics?3. How is listening test performance affected by test-taker characteristics?4. How do test task characteristics and test-taker characteristics interact with each other to affect performance on listening tests?Participants consisted of 187 first-year non-English majors at a university in Shanghai, China. The study findings were from both quantitative and qualitative data. For the first research question, an in-depth analysis was conducted on 48 listening passages and 159 items used in College English Test Band 4 (CET-4). With item difficulty as the dependent variable, correlation and regression analyses were performed to examine a model containing ten text variables and ten item variables. The results indicated that the best predictors of item difficulty are redundancy of necessary information and lexical overlap.For the second research question, a series of statistical analyses was carried out in which the hypothesis related to task characteristics of listening tests was posited and tested. Results indicated that specific characteristics may influence the difficulty of a test task, and accordingly learners'performance.For the third research question, a series of analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine the effects of the test-taker related variables on test performance. Attitudes toward tests, test anxiety and strategy use were found to exercise systematic impact on performance on listening tests. For the last research question, the interactive effects were investigated by conducting a multivariate analysis of variance. Results revealed complex interactions between test-taker related variables and item types on listening test performance.Furthermore, a retrospective study was conducted to supplement the results obtained from the quantitative study. The purpose was to further our understanding of performance on listening tests. Analyses of the verbal reports revealed the interactive effects of test task demands and test-takers' socio-psychological and strategic factors. Higher levels of test anxiety seem to be associated with performance decline in compound dictation tasks, and strategy use seems to contribute to performance on multiple-choice items.These findings were interpreted as having implications for language testing research methodology and practice.