Il dettato e il dictocloze sono prove valide e affidabili per valutare la comprensione orale?

Dictation and the gap-filling listening test are tests used by one of the major certifications in Italian as a foreign language, CILS (Università per Stranieri, Siena). They are intended to assess listening ability at lower levels for a specific audience (cf. Appendix 1). We believe that the validity and reliability of both types of test are questionable: it is unclear precisely what they measure and it is by no means certain that different markers’ assessment of errors made by candidates will coincide.