listening  : Introduction   

The assessments included eleven tasks which asked the students to listen to information presented orally, and either repeat that information or answer questions using the information. The video recordings for two of these tasks included pictures as well as sound, but the details students needed were provided mainly on the soundtrack. Students need to be able to listen to factual presentations or instructions and recall or interpret them correctly.

Five tasks were identical for both year 4 and year 8. A further task used the same task structure and questions for year 4 and year 8, but the information they listened to was considerably simplified for year 4. Two tasks were given only to year 4 students, and three tasks were given only to year 8 students.

Four of the tasks have been selected as link tasks (to be used again in the year 2002) and therefore are not described in detail here. Two of the link tasks were attempted by both year 4 and year 8 students, one only by year 4 students, and one only by year 8 students. The other seven tasks are released tasks for which full details are given.

The tasks are presented in the following order:

Year 4 students performed almost as well as year 8 students on the five tasks that were identical for both year levels. Averaged across the components of these tasks, only 13 percent more year 8 students than year 4 students were successful. On a few components year 4 students were as successful as year 8 students. Year 8 students enjoyed their greatest superiority over year 4 students with components that required inference or suited students with greater existing knowledge.


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