An Exploratory Study Of Task-based Assessment Of Listening

TBLT has been approbated by many specialists since 1990s. In succession, TBLA becomes a focus. It requires learners to perform activities that simulate the performances they will have to engage in outside the test situation and assesses their comprehensive competence by accomplishing tasks they will meet and operate in target language in future. It tests what candidates can do, but what they have learned.To develop TBLA, how to identify task difficulty is a controversial problem. Although there are some researches on it in recent years, the disquisitions are at a rough level, and few of them come down to learners themselves, whose perspectives are the most directed and authentic. The study analyzes the factors that affect listening task difficulty from the learner's perspective via the framework proposed by Skehan (1998), in which the items parallel to the demands of learners'cognitive process, including the guideline of their comprehensive competence. The results of the study show that:Students'self-perception of task difficulty can be used to predict their actual task performance;The hypothesized task difficulty set by the framework of Skehan (1998) does have influence on students'actual task performance.The thesis concludes the factors affecting listening task difficulty from learners'perspective. It is feasible that a task difficulty framework, to be fit for task-based assessment of listening in China, should be set up, and can be used as a basis to arrange and rank teaching tasks in curriculum. It is helpful to frame the order of knowledge in language learning, re-construct the target of FLT, and promote it effectively.