作者：牟岚 龙薏
　　Being an important part of input， listening determines the degree of linguistic proficiency. Feyten （1991） pointed out that we spent 45% of the time or above on listening when we communicate. As a primary method to appraise listening levels， listening assessment plays a significant role in linguistic evaluation.
　　After the review of literature on some of the most influential English tests both at home and abroad， such as junior high school entrance exam， senior high school entrance exam， college entrance exam， CET-4， CET-6， TEM-4， TEM-8， TOEFL， IELTS and BEC， different types of listening tests are summarized as follows：
　　1. Multiple-choice
　　This task is to listen to the recordings and choose the one correct answer from usually two to four selections， aiming at the test of the understanding of passage structure， main idea， detailed information， speaker’s attitude， and the abilities for prediction and inference， etc. The content of recordings can be divided into many forms：word， sentence， short and long conversations， interview， short passage， monologue， lecture， news broadcast and re-listening. The last special form is currently used in the TOEFL exam. Listeners are required to select the correct answer after listen again to a certain part of the content in the recordings， responding to questions like “What does the professor mean when she says this？”.
　　2. Reorder the jumbled sentence order
　　In this task，， listeners are demanded to listen to a short passage， then reorder the jumbled sentence order for the selections. Set the TOEFL exam as an example. There is usually a chart asking you to put the answer choices in order from either beginning to end or end to beginning. You need to listen to the recordings carefully and take notes， then go through the information in your notes to arrange it properly.
　　3. Matching
　　There are two kinds of matching tasks in listening tests. （1） Drawing lines：It requires listeners to listen to some words， sentences or a passage， then match them by drawing lines to the corresponding options that are in the forms of words or pictures. （2） Choosing letters：listeners have to choose a letter of the correct answer to respond to each question proposed in the recordings. In tests like IELTS and BEC， listeners are required to select the letters of the correct answers to match the questions， and the number of the correct answers are often more than that of the questions.
　　4. True or false