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| Presentation to new FLL TAs, Fall 2007 | ||
| Teaching a language WELL demands professional skills (Born in East LA #1). After lunch, Professor Fuller will keep you awake with his demonstration of active classroom teaching. If it seems backwards to talk about assessment before teacher, consider this: How can you know what or how to teach until you know what you'll be assessing, and what assessment really is? (Car-Talk French) Say! This question - What is assessment? - would be a great final exam question in the FLL Assessment Course, except that there is no final exam. Instead, there are projects and final presentations. But the topic would be a group focus for a group project. Anyhow… First, assessment is NOT testing, or not JUST testing. (Appropriate language testing is a topic much too big to cover in this overview. Suffice it to say that it's not the tricky grammar quizzes we did when I was a TA in the previous millenium.) And assessment in language teaching is NOT JUST the assessment language capabilities. We also need to assess such things as student goals, their expectations of the course they are encounterin, and their earlier experiences with language learning - not just how much language they have learned before, but how that earlier exposure affects their attitudes (example: first-year German intake and "scavenger hunt" survey). But, yes, assessment in our field does involve measuring language capability. Among the reasons are: 1) Sometimes language proficiency is a matter of life or death - for example, the language skills of the "German Coast Guard". 2) Many people want a measure of language skills for vocational purposes that are not quite so spectacular. You should become familiar with, for example, the European Union's "Language Passport" and its support materials, such as professional résumés that include descriptions of language skills. 3) And we need assessments of language skills for our academic programs, such as: a) in-course tests, and, b) placement tests - the PSU FLL Department uses the on-line interactive WebCAPE for its available languages of French, German and Spanish. Proper placement is one of the most important issues in our profession. top of page In North America, the "Gold Standard" for measuring proficiency in foreign/second languages is the ACTFL "Oral Proficiency Interview" (WBF overview of OPI with samples). Scoring guides (rubrics) are becoming more and more common in assessment. Even if a test is scored according to a point system, the examiner (and learner! and parents! and employer!) should have some understanding of what those scores mean in terms of what the user can and cannot do with the language. Scoring guides are objective performance descriptions; they are quite different from tests with arbitrary point scores that are then subjected to a bell curve. (First-year German writing test and its scoring guide) That raises a major issue: Assessment demands STANDARDS. In North America, there are two major (and related) sets of standards: 1) for describing language skills, the ACTFL "Proficiency Guidelines" are "the only game in town". They are used the define curriculum and specify student performance at the college/ university level, and even to state requirements for admission to the PSU FLL Master's programs. In K-12, customized standards directly tied to the Guidelines are being used to define state-wide standards and curricula in many states, including Oregon. (ACTFL Guidelines for Speaking; Writing; condensed version by WBF, used in PSU First-year German; OUS [Oregon University System] PASS program; PASS standards for Second Languages; Portland Public Schools standards for Second Languages) 2) for describing entire courses and programs, the ACTFL "National Standards for Foreign Language Learning" (the "5 C's"). Training in language standards and assessment is available both in the PSU FLL Department and in workshops conducted across the country, often at the conferences of our professional organizations, such as COFLT (homepage). Also, a grant-supported project the in PSU FLL Department produced specifications for language-teacher training appropriate to the standards described here. top of page (Following is still in draft, with more text and links to come:) At the departmental and institutional level, there is assessment of courses, programs, departments and entire institutions. Such is happening right now at PSU: 1) the FLL Assessment Committee and its several projects; 2) the larger FLL assessment initiative (curriculum mapping, etc.); 3) PSU institutional assessment (accrediation process), reflected in activities going on right this week: Focus on Faculty, 19 September; and Fall Symposium on Learning Outcomes, 20 September. PSU now has an "Institutional Assessment Council", of which I am a member. Important resources: The PSU Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) (training sessions, library of teaching and assessment resources, path to some jobs!) Grants: Both government and foundations are increasing grant funding in the area of assessment, including language assessment, Sample link to US DOE (CFDA 84.017) Possibilities that directly affect YOU: 1) coursework (FLL, AppLing, School of Ed) 2) occasional project and grant work, sometimes paid (see me!); 3) MA thesis and MA paper topics; 4) further on: degree programs (including Ed.Doc. in School of Ed) Topics not covered here: reading, listening; assessing learner styles and strategies; assessing teacher beliefs and behaviors; classroom practices that promote proficiency; portfolio construction and assessment; technology and assessment; research design A historical note: PSU FLL has long been active and a leader in language assessment. The first guiding figure in that activity was Prof. Louis J. Elteto, long-time chairman of the Department. In the early 1980s and later, he encouraged many of us then-younger faculty to learn about standards and assessment, and to apply our knowedge in the classroom. In closing, an example of ideal language learning, teaching and - can you see where it happens? - assessment. And did you detect where and how grammar is taught and learned? link to links to clips of popular movies that portray language teaching, learning (or lack of learning), and testing top of page |