Previous studies argued that most listening tests used scripted texts which may not represent real-world spoken discourse and that semi-scripted texts should be used (Clark, 2014). However, only a few studies investigated the extent to which these two types of spoken texts are different (Wagner, 2016). This study aimed to identify linguistic features which distinguished scripted from semi-scripted texts. Two corpora were created based on transcripts of standardized listening tests: the reference corpus (the scripted texts) and the target corpus (the semi-scripted texts). Using lexico-grammatical and phonological analyses, results revealed that the semi-scripted texts were different from the scripted counterparts regarding dysfluencies and discourse connectors. Despite the limited number of texts, these findings echoed results from studies using much larger corpora (Biber, 2006). Interpretation and explanations were provided using a register variation framework (Biber & Conrad, 2009). Implications for L2 listening pedagogy and assessment were also addressed.