Task Formats in Assessing Listening Comprehension: A Comparative Study on Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language Textbooks and Preferences of Instructors

Abstract

The aim of the study is to examine the frequency and distribution of the task formats in the evaluation of listening comprehension skills in the Turkish language teaching textbooks for foreigners. This study also aims to compare these findings with the practices preferred in the exams by the instructors teaching Turkish as a foreign language. In the study, sequential exploratory design was applied by using document analysis and descriptive method. Three widely used textbooks and 36 instructors as the participants have formed the scope of the study. The findings indicate that the most frequently preferred task formats in the books are gap-filling and dichotomous item. As a result of the z-test, a significant difference between the textbooks in terms of the ratios of short-answer question, multiple-choice item, matching, and dichotomous item task formats has been found. Dichotomous item, gap-filling, sentence completion, short answer questions, information transfer, multiple choice and matching have been the most preferred task formats by the instructors in the exams. As a result of Kruskal Wallis test, no significant difference was found between the participants in terms of preferring the evaluation task formats according to the variables of graduation degree, last graduated department, and professional experience.