A Study Of Textual Competence In Listening Testing

Textual competence is the ability to join utterances together to form a text according to the rules of cohesion and coherence, and the ability to convey and interpret the meaning of the text in context; it is one of the distinct components of communicative ability (Canale & Swain, 1980; Bachman, 1990, 1991; Hu Zhuanglin, 1994, 1996). The theories related and contributing to textual competence are theories of cohesion and coherence, context and schema. These textual theories are closely related to each other and mutually influenced, and make a contribution as a whole to the process of interpreting and comprehending a text.This thesis intends to study how the textual competence is tested in TEM-4(Test for English Majors) listening comprehension. The general research question in the study is: How is the textual competence tested in listening comprehension? In order to answer this question, three sub-research questions should be answered:1) What is the basic situation of the textual competence tested in TEM-4 listening testing?2) How can test-takers'textual competence predict or account for the variance of average listening score?3) How do different groups of textual competence perform differently in listening process? Firstly, qualitative analysis is done on the listening materials and test questions of TEM-4 test papers in recent years to answer the first sub-question. Secondly, quantitative analysis is done the answer the second and third questions. The instruments used in this study cover the average listening score of the four final-term listening examinations for 145 participants, and the questionnaire which is developed, piloted and distributed to 145 sophomores majoring in English at Lu Dong University. SPSS (11.0/PC) is used to conduct descriptive statistics, regression analysis and One-way ANOVA.The research findings are:Qualitative analysis shows that most aspects of the textual competence have been tested and applied in TEM-4 listening comprehension and textual competence plays an important role in listening comprehension. In addition, all aspects of the textual theories are closely...