An attempt to develop a listening test and teaching materials focusing on phonetic aspects

我们项目的目的是制作一个能够准确预测学习者音素感知能力的英语听力测试。为了达到这个目标，我们进行了初步的研究，看看现有的听力测试如何预测学习者的这种能力。通过对学习者的听写测试和访谈发现，被认为具有相同听力理解能力水平的学习者在整体和个体辅音感知技能上存在差异。单音节单词的英文首辅音最小对测试结果表明，正确率差异不大，但每个问题的反应时间在学习者之间和测试项目之间差异很大。从这些结果可以清楚地看出，现有的听力测试并不能预测学习者的辅音感知技能。根据我们通过一系列研究获得的发现，我们计划制作一个可靠的听力测试。

The purpose of our project is to make an English listening test which can precisely predict the learner's phoneme perception skills. To attain this goal we conducted a preliminary research to see how existing listening tests can predict this ability of the learner's. Through the dictation test and interview to the learners, it was found that the learners who are regarded to have the same level of listening comprehension ability differ in their overall and individual consonant perception skills. The result of a minimal pair test of English initial consonants of mono-syllabic words shows that percentage of correct answers didn't differ much, but reaction time for answering each question differ a lot between the learners and between the test items. From these results it is clear that the existing listening tests cannot predict the learner's consonant perception skills. Based on the findings we obtained through a series of studies, we plan to produce a reliable listening test.