32792_Preface1-10.pmd

Assessment PracticesAssessment Practices

Assessment Practices

inin

Foreign Language EducationForeign Language Education

Foreign Language Education

DIMENSION 2004DIMENSION 2004

DIMENSION 2004

Lynne McClendon

Rosalie M. Cheatham

Denise Egéa-Kuehne

Carol Wilkerson

Judith H. Schomber

Jana Sandarg

Scott T. Grubbs

Victoria Rodrigo

Miguel Mantero

Sharron Gray Abernethy

Editors

C. Maurice CherryC. Maurice Cherry

C. Maurice Cherry

Furman University

Lee BradleyLee Bradley

Lee Bradley

Valdosta State University

Selected Proceedings of the 2004 Joint Conference of the

Southern Conference on Language Southern Conference on Language

Southern Conference on Language

eachingeaching

eaching

and the Alabama Association of Foreign Language Teachers

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

SCOLT Publications

1165 University Center

Valdosta State University

Valdosta, GA 31698

Telephone 229 333 7358

Fax 229 333 7389

http://www.valdosta.edu/scolt/

[email protected]

in any form or by any means, without

written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 1-883640-17-2

Valdosta State University provided equipment and facilities

in support of the work of

preparing this volume for press.

iii

ABLE OF CONTENTSABLE OF CONTENTS

ABLE OF CONTENTS

Review and Acceptance Procedures .............................................................iv

2004 SCOLT Editorial Board ........................................................................v

Introduction ................................................................................................. vii

Acknowledgments .......................................................................................... x

Announcement:

Special Series on Special Series on

Special Series on

Assessment Assessment

Assessment . ......................................xi

No Child Left Behind in ForeignNo Child Left Behind in Foreign

No Child Left Behind in Foreign

Language Education Language Education

Language Education . .........................................................

Lynne McClendon

Using Learner and Using Learner and

Using Learner and

eacher Preparationeacher Preparation

eacher Preparation

tandards to Reform a Language Major tandards to Reform a Language Major

tandards to Reform a Language Major . ........................

Rosalie M. Cheatham

tudent Electronic Portfolio tudent Electronic Portfolio

tudent Electronic Portfolio

Assessment Assessment

Assessment . ......................

1919

Denise Egéa-Kuehne

Assessing Readiness of Foreign Language EducationAssessing Readiness of Foreign Language Education

Assessing Readiness of Foreign Language Education

Majors to Majors to

Majors to

ake the Praxis II Examake the Praxis II Exam

ake the Praxis II Exam . ...............................

2929

Carol Wilkerson, Judith H. Schomber,

and Jana Sandarg

The The

The

TPR TPR

TPR

est: est:

est:

otal Physical Responseotal Physical Response

otal Physical Response

as an as an

as an

Assessment Assessment

Assessment

oolool

ool . .....................................................

4343

Scott Grubbs

Assessing the Impact of Narrow Listening:Assessing the Impact of Narrow Listening:

Assessing the Impact of Narrow Listening:

tudents’tudents’

tudents’

Perceptions and Performance Perceptions and Performance

Perceptions and Performance . .......................

5353

Victoria Rodrigo

Accounting for Accounting for

Accounting for

Activity: Cognition andActivity: Cognition and

Activity: Cognition and

Oral Proficiency Oral Proficiency

Oral Proficiency

Assessment Assessment

Assessment . ..........................................

6767

Miguel Mantero

Building Bridges for International Internships Building Bridges for International Internships

Building Bridges for International Internships . ...........

8585

Sharron Gray Abernethy

SCOLT Board of Directors 2003-2004 .............................

101101

101

Advisory Board of Sponsors and Patrons 2003 ................

102102

102

Previous Editions of

Dimension .......................................

108108

108

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

Review and Review and

Review and

Acceptance ProceduresAcceptance Procedures

Acceptance Procedures

SCOLSCOL

SCOL

DimensionDimension

Dimension

The procedures through which articles are reviewed and accepted for publica-

tion in the proceedings volume of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching

(SCOLT) begin with the submission of a proposal to present a session at the SCOLT

Annual Conference. Once the members of the Program Committee have made their

selections, the editors invite each presenter to submit the abstract of an article that

might be suitable for publication in

Dimension

, the annual volume of conference

proceedings.

Only those persons who present

in person

at the annual Joint Conference are

eligible to have written versions of their presentations included in

Dimension

. Those

whose abstracts are accepted receive copies of publication guidelines, which fol-

low almost entirely the fifth edition of the

Publication Manual of the American

Psychological Association

. The names and academic affiliations of the authors and

information identifying schools and colleges cited in articles are removed from the

manuscripts, and at least four members of the Editorial Board and the co-editors

review each of them. Reviewers, all of whom are professionals committed to sec-

ond language education, make one of four recommendations: publish as is, publish

with minor revisions, publish with significant rewriting, or do not publish.

The editors review the recommendations and notify all authors as to whether

their articles will be printed. As a result of these review procedures, at least three

individuals decide whether to include an oral presentation in the annual confer-

ence, and at least six others read and evaluate each article that appears in

Dimen-

sion

2004 SCOL2004 SCOL

2004 SCOL

Editorial Board Editorial Board

Editorial Board

Theresa A. Antes Sheri Spaine Long

University of Florida University of Alabama at Birmingham

Gainesville, FL Birmingham, AL

Jean-Pierre Berwald Joy Renjilian-Burgy

University of Massachusetts Wellesley College

Amherst, MA Wellesley, MA

Karen Hardy Cárdenas Jean Marie Schultz

South Dakota State University University of California, Santa Barbara

Brookings, SD Santa Barbara, CA

A. Raymond Elliott Anne M. Scott

University of Texas at Arlington SUNY-Cortland

Arlington, TX Cortland, NY

Carine Feyten John Underwood

University of South Florida Western Washington University

Tampa, FL Bellingham, WA

Cynthia Fox Ray Verzasconi

University at Albany (SUNY) Oregon State University, emeritus

Albany, NY Portland, OR

Carolyn Gascoigne Joel Walz

University of Nebraska at Omaha University of Georgia

Omaha, NE Athens, GA

Virginia Gramer Richard C. Williamson

Consolidated School District #181 Bates College

Hinsdale, IL Lewiston, ME

Norbert Hedderich Helene Zimmer-Loew

University of Rhode Island American Association of

Kingston, RI Teachers of German

Cherry Hill, NJ

Paula Heusinkveld

Clemson University

Clemson, SC

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

REMOVE HEADER line, leave the “vi”

vii

IntroductionIntroduction

Introduction

One of the most onerous, yet critical tasks facing members of the Board of

Directors of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) is that of

selecting a theme well in advance of each annual conference. Given the current

climate of demands for accountability and reform at national, state, and local levels

in both K-12 and post-secondary institutions, “Assessment Practices in Foreign

Language Education” seemed particularly timely as the theme for the 2004 SCOLT

meeting, March 18-20, in Mobile, Alabama. Although the invitation for presenters

to submit abstracts for articles to be considered for publication clearly stated that

authors were not required to address this topic, each of the contributions most

highly recommended by our Editorial Board for inclusion in this volume dealt with

the theme, either in part or almost exclusively.

Before readers begin perusing the eight primary articles in this collection, the

editors urge them to pay special attention to the announcement on pp. xi-xv, where

Lynne McClendon and Carol Wilkerson introduce a new series of articles on as-

sessment, to include an annotated bibliography on the subject in the 2005 volume

Dimension.

The authors also provide an overview of the two agencies approved

to accredit teacher education programs–the National Council for Accreditation of

Teacher Education (NCATE) and the Teacher Education Accreditation Council

(TEAC)–and explain how certification requirements, teacher licensure, and man-

datory tests vary across the states in the SCOLT region.

Touted at its inception as a major educational policy reform at the national

level and hailed by many as a much-needed initiative to mandate the kind of change

required to diminish many of the inequities in public education and hold states,

districts, and even individual schools accountable for the failure of their students to

demonstrate sufficient progress, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)

quickly became a political football. The legislation attracted intense criticism once

results of high-stakes testing and other criteria used as evidence of success or fail-

ure showed that many schools and districts were not making the grade in terms of

mandated progress goals, often because of the obvious inconsistencies in estab-

lishing similar goals for otherwise comparable schools and districts. Nevertheless,

NCLB is a reality, and individual teachers, schools, and districts currently have

little recourse but to make every effort to comply with both the spirit and the letter

of the law. In “No Child Left Behind in Foreign Language Education,” Lynne

McClendon provides an overview of the law as it affects second language (L2)

teachers. More specifically, though, she examines in detail one of the key phrases

in the legislation, “highly qualified teachers,” as it is defined by the law, explores

ways in which current and aspiring L2 teachers and their administrators and super-

visors can assess progress being made towards meeting the goals of the NCLB act,

and suggests ways in which they can ensure that they are complying with the law in

a timely fashion.

Academic territoriality, parochial interests, and, on occasion, sheer paranoia

often lead to the maintenance of a curricular status quo in higher education, thereby

viii

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

resulting in total stagnation of course offerings and program development. Despite

the fact that L2 programs at numerous colleges and universities have made consid-

erable progress in having their courses reflect the latest philosophies concerning

L2 acquisition, the transformation of the overall curriculum design of a particular

department or program in many cases shows little evidence of change over a period

of two or more decades. In “Using Learner and Teacher Preparation Standards to

Reform a Language Major,” Rosalie Cheatham explores the ways in which a for-

eign language department at one large university assessed its need for reform and

overhauled its curriculum to bring it more closely in line with current best prac-

tices, with attention to existing L2 standards and the specific needs of those en-

rolled in teacher education programs.

Portfolio review has become a mainstay of assessment tools at many educa-

tional levels. In “Student Electronic Portfolio Assessment,” Denise Egéa-Kuehne

provides an overview of the terminology related to assessment and discusses some

of the ways in which program assessment and evaluation have been practiced with

varying degrees of success in recent years. The author then cites both advantages

and limitations of using the electronic portfolio as a mechanism for assessing the

progress of individual students. Of particular value to those interested in undertak-

ing a similar venture is the concrete information the author provides concerning

both the organization of such a program and the specific list of technological tools

essential to the successful implementation of electronic portfolio assessment.

Few experiences prove so disheartening to an aspiring teacher as that of com-

pleting a prescribed program of course work and perhaps even a teaching intern-

ship, only to receive a score falling below the established minimum on a mandatory

standardized test. Just when such would-be teachers see themselves as being on the

threshold of beginning a career in L2 education, they see their dreams shattered.

One of the issues of greatest concern to those preparing teachers for qualifying

exams is the inconsistency among states in terms of both the specific tests being

required and the discrepancies in cutoff scores from one state to another. Of equal

concern is the nature of the specific exams in terms of content and delivery of

questions. In “Assessing Readiness of Foreign Language Education Majors to Take

the Praxis II Exam,” Carol Wilkerson, Judith Schomber, and Jana Sandarg survey

such inequities and concerns and offer concrete recommendations as to how candi-

dates for certification can best prepare themselves to achieve acceptable test scores.

“Total Physical Response” has become such a staple in the vocabulary of L2

educators that it is most commonly simply referred to as “TPR,” and the term

“Total Physical Response Storytelling” (TPRS) has more recently become almost

as widely known. Long an integral component of language programs in elementary

schools, TPR has in recent years been integrated into the curricula of language

classes for more mature learners. Nevertheless, the use of TPR both as a compo-

nent of the overall assessment process for individual language development and as

a measure of programmatic success has to date received insufficient recognition, as

Scott Grubbs reminds readers in “The TPR Test: Total Physical Response as an

Assessment Tool.” The author further argues convincingly that in addition to being

an effective pedagogical vehicle during early language instruction and a viable

evaluation instrument, TPR can be used to appeal to the multiple intelligences of a

diverse population of language learners.

A survey of the majority of methods texts and bibliographies of articles on L2

education reveals that the amount of literature on listening comprehension in L2

education generally pales in comparison to that available on the speaking, reading,

and writing skills. Therefore, any contribution in the area of developing listening

skills is particularly welcome if it adds something fresh, as is the case in Victoria

Rodrigo’s “Assessing the Impact of Narrow Listening: Students’ Perceptions and

Performance.” After surveying previous findings concerning the role of listening in

L2 learning, the author defines “narrow listening” (NL), provides a framework for

the systematic integration of NL into the L2 curriculum, and shares guidelines for

the development of the audio library critical to the success of the NL approach.

Finally, the author provides positive results from an assessment of both students’

perceptions of the approach and the effects of NL on their actual listening skills, as

measured by an aural comprehension test.

In “Accounting for Activity: Cognition and Oral Proficiency Assessment,”

Miguel Mantero examines another of the basic L2 skills, speaking, both with refer-

ence to the specific ways in which cognition plays a role in the assessment of speaking

proficiency, according to the

ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines,

and with respect to

determining the degree to which cognition should be a fundamental part of any

assessment of oral proficiency. Through a meticulous analysis of several oral pro-

ficiency interviews and collaboration with an external evaluator solicited to pro-

vide an objective point of view, the author concludes that cognition must occupy a

more central role in assessment of speaking proficiency and recommends that class-

room instructors make use of

instructional conversations

and a framework of

in-

digenous assessment criteria

to enhance the abilities of their students to demon-

strate greater overall proficiency.

Because prospective employers and admissions committees continue to raise

their expectations of job applicants and candidates for admission to graduate pro-

grams and professional schools, college students make increasing demands on their

institutions to provide a more extensive range of internships, as is particularly the

case for those eager to integrate their interests in business and L2 study. In “Build-

ing Bridges for International Internships,” Sharron Abernethy details the structure

of one university’s language/business internship program, describes the procedure

by which it was assessed, and in several appendices shares both a syllabus and a

number of forms that may prove useful as models for those interested in develop-

ing similar programs at their institutions.

We believe that L2 professionals at all levels will view this volume as a di-

verse collection of informative articles, but we hope that readers will find them

truly enjoyable as well.

The Editors

Lee Bradley Maurice Cherry

Valdosta State University Furman University

Valdosta, GA Greenville, SC

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

AcknowledgmentsAcknowledgments

Acknowledgments

Among our greatest pleasures in preparing each volume of

Dimension

is that

of working with an Editorial Board as generous with its time as it is knowledgeable

about the field of second language education. We continue to recruit reviewers

from within and beyond our SCOLT region, teachers of various languages at the

elementary level, in graduate schools, and at every stage in between. This year’s 19

readers hail from 16 different states and include those familiar with a broad range

of critical issues in second language education, research problems, legal concerns,

and a vast array of contemporary methodologies and instructional techniques. Our

reviewers are attentive to detail, and, in addition to their predictable role in citing

both the strengths and weaknesses of specific articles, many share with those whose

articles are to be published invaluable advice concerning potential references that

might otherwise have been overlooked, questions that should be addressed, and

recommendations for clarification of language or a change in focus in the treatment

of a particular subject.

It should go without saying that the authors deserve our praise as well, because

they have been willing to heed the advice of the reviewers, accepting most sugges-

tions in a positive way and in a few cases convincingly defending their original

observations. Even in the final days of our preparation of this volume, the editors

have had to communicate with almost all of the authors, in some cases requesting

clarification of a specific term or phrase and in others asking for a last-minute

update of a Web address or bibliographical reference. In every case the authors

have responded promptly and courteously.

Because many of those teaching second languages are less familiar with the

APA style than with other manuscript formats and since technological advances

have made citations of electronic references fairly complex, the task of double-

checking Web sources for accuracy and that of cross-checking text citations against

the References section of each article at times prove tedious. We therefore owe

special thanks to Donté Stewart, a Furman University undergraduate who has as-

sisted with the proofreading and verification of the many references in these ar-

ticles.

As always, the editors of

Dimension

and the SCOLT Board of Directors owe

our greatest debt to the Administration of Valdosta State University for having

made available to us the resources necessary for publication of this volume. With-

out such support,

Dimension 2004

would not exist in its present state.

Lee Bradley and

C. Maurice Cherry, Editors

Announcement:Announcement:

Announcement:

Special Series on Special Series on

Special Series on

AssessmentAssessment

Assessment

ynne McClendonynne McClendon

ynne McClendon

Executive Director

Southern Conference on Language Teaching

Carol Carol

Carol

ilkersonilkerson

ilkerson

Carson-Newman College

On the eve of its 40th anniversary, the Southern Conference on Language Teach-

ing (SCOLT) plans a special series of articles on assessment within the foreign

language profession. The 2004 edition of

Dimension

offers an overview of the

instruments used to evaluate teacher education programs that prepare foreign lan-

guage teacher candidates and examines the teacher evaluation instruments required

for licensure in the SCOLT region. The series will continue in the 2005 edition of

Dimension

with an annotated bibliography of noteworthy and recommended ar-

ticles on assessment.

Accreditation of Accreditation of

Accreditation of

eacher Education Programs: NCAeacher Education Programs: NCA

eacher Education Programs: NCA

TE and TE and

TE and

TEACTEAC

TEAC

There are two teacher education accrediting agencies approved by the U.S.

Department of Education. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Edu-

cation (NCATE) was founded in 1954 and was acknowledged as the only agency

responsible for accrediting teacher education programs in 1992. Over 500 institu-

tions have met NCATE accreditation standards, and 48 states have a partnership

with NCATE to conduct joint or concurrent reviews. The Teacher Education Ac-

creditation Council (TEAC) was founded in 1997 and recently received federal

acknowledgement as an accrediting agency by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod

Paige. There are currently three institutions that have undergone TEAC review and

several others in the review process. The difference between these two agencies

can be seen in their distinct approaches in verifying the validity of a teacher educa-

tion program and its ability to deliver knowledgeable and skilled P-12 teachers.

NCATE is a performance-based accreditation system. A paper review of an

institution’s teacher education program is conducted either by the state or by a

foreign language professional organization according to the agreement NCATE

has with the state of the institution making application for accreditation. A Board of

Examiners conducts an on-site visit to evaluate the capacity of the program to meet

standards of delivery. The following standards form the basis of the NCATE review:

xii

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

I. Candidate Performance

Standard 1: Candidate knowledge, skills, and dispositions

Standard 2: Assessment system and unit evaluation

II. Unit Capacity

Standard 3: Field Experiences and Clinical Practice

Standard 4: Diversity

Standard 5: Faculty Qualifications, Performance, and Development

Standard 6: Unit Governance and Resources

After submitting the

Intent to Seek NCATE Accreditation

form and meeting

obligations required for this process, institutional programs seeking NCATE ac-

creditation must provide a program report no longer than 140 pages with a cover

letter, an overview section, response to the standards to be met, and appendices

with supporting documentation. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign

Languages (ACTFL) partnered with NCATE to develop the specific foreign lan-

guage standards, using the rubrics “approaches standard,” “meets standard,” and

“exceeds standard” to qualify the applicant’s degree of meeting them. After a re-

view of the information submitted with the Board of Examiners’ report, NCATE

awards one of the following designations:

first accreditation

provisional accredi-

tation

continuing

accreditation

conditional accreditation

, or

accreditation with

probation

. Those interested in further information regarding the accreditation pro-

cess, should access the NCATE Web site at <http://www.ncate.org>.

The heart of the TEAC process is based on the examination of student learning

and on the quality of evidence submitted by an institution to support its claim that

students are meeting established learning objectives. Each component also has a

focus on learning how to learn, multicultural perspectives and accuracy, and tech-

nology. The following represent TEAC’s goals and principles:

Quality Principle I

1.0 Evidence of Student Learning

1.1 Subject matter knowledge

1.2 Pedagogical knowledge

1.3 Teaching skill

Quality Principle II

2.0 Valid Assessment of Student Learning

2.1 Evidence of links between assessments and the program goal, claims,

and requirements

2.2 Evidence of valid interpretations of assessment

Quality Principle III

3.0 Institutional Learning

3.1 Program decisions and planning based on evidence

3.2 Influential quality control system

Announcement: Special Series on Assessment xiii

Standards of Capacity for Program Quality

4.1 Curriculum

4.2 Faculty

4.3 Facilities, Equipment, and Supplies

4.4 Fiscal and Administrative

4.5 Student Support Services

4.6 Recruiting and Admissions Practices, Academic Calendars, Catalogs,

and Publications

4.7 Student Complaints

A major component of the TEAC process involves the

Inquiry Brief

prepared

by the institution undergoing evaluation. This academic piece must describe clear

and evaluative goals for student learning and the application of these goals in cur-

riculum design and pedagogy, evidence of student learning, the way in which the

institution allows for continuous improvement, and the strength of the seven ca-

pacity standards. TEAC sends trained auditors to the institution to conduct the site

visit through a thorough investigation of the

Inquiry Brief

, including a request for

raw data to verify the claims made in this document. During the audit visit, the

institution has the opportunity to update important changes that may have taken

place since the submission of the

Inquiry Brief

. The audit team turns over its com-

pleted audit report to the Accreditation Panel to allow evaluation of the evidence in

order to determine which of the following categories of accreditation will be awarded

to the institution:

accreditation

new program

pre-accreditation

provisional

accreditation

, or

denied accreditation

. For further information regarding the TEAC

accreditation process and schools that have undergone this process, access the web

site at <http://www.teac.org>.

eacher Evaluation Instruments in the SCOLeacher Evaluation Instruments in the SCOL

eacher Evaluation Instruments in the SCOL

Region Region

Region

The 13 states that comprise the Southern Conference on Language Teaching

(SCOLT) differ in the languages for which they certify teachers and in their certifi-

cation requirements. To simplify matters, the discussion that follows examines

certification instruments for French, German, and Spanish. However, Web sites are

provided for the benefit of readers wishing information for other modern languages

and the classics.

In the SCOLT region all states except Alabama, Florida, and Texas require

teacher candidates to take the

Praxis II Exam

for licensure to teach French, Ger-

man, or Spanish. The

Praxis II Exam

is a series of exams developed and administered

by Educational Testing Service (ETS), a professional test development company

based in Princeton, New Jersey. State departments of education or agencies re-

sponsible for licensing specify which of the various component tests in the Praxis

Series will be used for certification, and they establish their state’s minimum pass-

ing scores.

xiv

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

The two most commonly required component tests are the Productive Lan-

guage Skills Test and the Content Knowledge Test. The Productive Language Skills

Test is a 2-hour test of candidates’ speaking and writing abilities. The Content

Knowledge Test is a 2-hour test of 120 multiple-choice questions, divided into four

sections. The first section evaluates interpretative listening; the second tests knowl-

edge of the structure of the target language; the third assesses interpretative reading;

and the fourth tests knowledge of cultural perspectives. Test-takers respond to ques-

tions about language and culture based upon tape-recorded listening passages and

printed material. Details about specific tests, languages not mentioned above, and

passing scores may be found at <www.ets.org/praxis/prxstate.html>.

Licensure in Licensure in

Licensure in

Alabama, Florida, and Alabama, Florida, and

Alabama, Florida, and

exasexas

exas

Three states in the SCOLT region have their own, distinct licensure require-

ments. In Alabama, teacher candidates take a common basic skills test, but each

college or university designs its own comprehensive content exam for licensure.

This procedure may change, as a U.S. District Court mandate allows that in 2005

the state may resume implementing subject matter testing (J. Meyer, personal com-

munication, October 28, 2003).

Candidates in Florida take state-made, multiple-choice and essay tests for their

content areas. The Spanish test assesses candidates’ proficiency in speaking, listen-

ing, writing, and reading, as well as their knowledge of Hispanic cultures (of both

Spain and Spanish America), language structure, and principles of second language

acquisition.

The French test assesses candidates’ communication skills, their knowledge of

French and Francophone cultures, and their knowledge derived from French and

Francophone sources and their connections with other disciplines and information.

In addition, the test evaluates candidates’ knowledge of pedagogy and their knowl-

edge of the nature of language and culture through comparisons of French and their

own language and culture.

The German test references the 1986

Proficiency Guidelines

of the American

Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages to assess candidates’ comprehen-

sion at an advanced level of spoken German passages pertaining to different times

and places on topics of general interest and daily routine and their ability to con-

verse in German at an intermediate-high level, to write German at an

intermediate-high level, and to read at an advanced level a simple connected Ger-

man passage dealing with a variety of basic personal and social needs and topics of

general interest. In addition, the test assesses the examinees’ knowledge of the

following: basic German vocabulary in areas of general interest and application of

vocabulary skills, basic German grammar and syntax in context, the social customs

and daily life of German-speaking countries, the history and geography of Ger-

man-speaking countries, arts and sciences, and pedagogy and professional

knowledge. More information and details about language not mentioned may be

found at <www.fldoe.org/edcert>.

Announcement: Special Series on Assessment xv

Teacher candidates in Texas take the locally developed multiple-choice

Ex-

amination for the Certification of Educators in Texas

(

ExCET

) for certification in

French, German, and Spanish. However, Texas is in the midst of replacing the

ExCET

tests with the

Texas Examination of Educator Standards

(

TExES

), reported

to be based on public school curriculum (State Board for Educator Certification

Information and Support Center, personal communication, October 28, 2003). The

TExES

exams contain five subareas that assess listening, written communication,

language structures, vocabulary and usage, and language and culture. Details about

the

TExES

may be found at <www.texes.nesinc.com>. French and Spanish candi-

dates are also required to take the

Texas Oral Proficiency Test

(

TOPT

), a 75-minute

test in which candidates record their responses to a total of 15 picture, topic, and

situational tasks that range from intermediate to superior levels of proficiency. A

thorough description of each

TOPT

test is available at <www.topt.nesinc.com>.

Given the mobility of contemporary society, readers interested in transferabil-

ity of certification should examine reciprocity agreements established by The

National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification

(NASDTEC). Such information is available at <www.nasdtec.org>.

blank page xvi

No Child Left BehindNo Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind

in Foreign Language Educationin Foreign Language Education

in Foreign Language Education

ynne McClendonynne McClendon

ynne McClendon

SCOLT Executive Director

AbstractAbstract

Abstract

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the revised Elementary

and Secondary Education Act, is one of the most sweeping educational re-

form movements in recent times. While there are many subcomponents of this

Act, one area specifically touches on foreign language education: “highly

qualified teachers.” This article examines the term “highly qualified teacher”

as defined by NCLB, as well as effective practices highly qualified foreign

language teachers, curriculum program specialists, and college of education

instructors can employ to leave no child behind in foreign language educa-

tion. Using this information, teachers, curriculum program specialists, and

college of education instructors can evaluate their own progress and pro-

grams to ensure that all students achieve a level of success in foreign language

studies.

BackgroundBackground

Background

Leaving no child behind implies that

all

students can learn. Over the last de-

cade and a half, foreign language education has been shaped by a guiding “can-do”

philosophy reflected in the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-

guages (ACTFL) Statement of Philosophy in

Standards for Foreign Language

Learning in the 21st Century

Language and communication are at the heart of the human experience.

The United States must educate students who are equipped linguistically

and culturally to communicate successfully in a pluralistic American soci-

ety and abroad. This imperative envisions a future in which ALL students

will develop and maintain proficiency in English and at least one other

language, modern or classical. (National Standards in Foreign Language

Education Project, 1999, p. 7)

This same commitment is echoed in the publication

World Languages Other

Than English Standards

(National Board for Professional Teaching Standards,

2001): “Accomplished teachers are dedicated to making knowledge accessible to

all students. They act on the belief that all students can learn” (p. vi).

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

States receiving Title I funding must ensure that the teachers of the “core aca-

demic subjects”–English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science,

foreign

languages

, civics and government, economics, arts, history and geography–meet

the definition of “highly qualified” to continue receiving funding (No Child Left

Behind Act of 2001, 2002). The term “highly qualified,” according to the National

Governors Association article, “NCLB: Teacher Quality Legislation,” indicates “that

the teacher has obtained full state certification (including alternative certification)

or passed the state teacher licensing examination, and holds a license to teach in

such state” (2002). The article declares that new elementary teachers, in addition to

having obtained state certification at the minimum of the bachelor’s level, must

also have “passed a test of knowledge and teaching skills in reading, writing, math-

ematics, and other areas of the basic elementary school curriculum.” Likewise new

middle and high school teachers, in addition to holding a valid state certificate at

the bachelor’s level, must also “have demonstrated competency in each of the

teacher’s subjects.”

Regarding veteran teachers, Title IX, section 9101 (23) (C), stipulates that

these teachers must also hold a valid certificate at the bachelor’s level and meet the

same standards required of new teachers by completing course work, passing a

test, or by demonstrating competence in all subject matter taught by the teacher.

The timeline for accomplishing the “highly qualified” teacher status for

all

teach-

ers in the core subjects, including foreign language, is by the end of the 2005-2006

school year. As of 2002-2003, states and local educational agencies must begin

reporting progress toward this goal and ensuring that “new hires” have met the

standards set forth.

Prospective foreign language teachers at the undergraduate levels would do

well to work with their institutions’ departments of education to ensure they have

the appropriate coursework and are prepared as well for teacher tests or other means

of accountability. Beyond the teacher tests, it is important for modern foreign lan-

guage teachers to be fluent enough to use language as a means of instruction in the

classroom. Many colleges and universities offer study-abroad programs designed

to enhance basic language skills obtained in the classroom. As post-secondary de-

partments of education begin aligning their courses of study with the National

Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)¹ standards and guide-

lines, the prospective foreign language teacher will be on track for successfully

passing tests that may be required by the state as a part of the licensure process and

for performing successfully in the classroom as well.

NCATE was founded in 1954 as a nonprofit and nongovernmental organiza-

tion devoted to the pursuit of ensuring quality teacher education programs through

rigorous standards that the education departments of universities and colleges must

meet in order to become NCATE-accredited. Several educational organizations

and associations comprise the NCATE council and contribute to the ongoing re-

search and refinement of what constitutes effective teacher education programs.

There is an established process for applying for accreditation, with preconditions

for being accepted as a candidate, a program review inclusive of both review of the

portfolio and an on-site review, follow-up reports, and maintenance of accredita-

No Child Left Behind in Foreign Language Education 3

tion once an educational unit has obtained its first accreditation. NCATE also pro-

vides workshops for institutions interested in initiating the process.

What are these standards that NCATE has indicated as the foundations of good

teacher preparation programs, and how were they created? The basic NCATE stan-

dards, developed by teacher educators, practicing teachers, content specialists, and

local and state policy-makers, were based on researched practices and conditions

for learning. Various content-related organizations and groups working with NCATE

took the next step of ensuring usable standards by addressing the core standards in

terms of the particular content area. In this respect ACTFL played an important

role in defining the standards in terms of foreign language education. Using re-

search from the field, the ACTFL Standards Writing Team set forth six content

standards that in general address the following categories: (1) proficiency in the

target language, (2) recognition of the role of culture and incorporating other disci-

plines, (3) language acquisition theories and practices, (4) standards-based

curriculum and implementation of standards in daily lesson plans, (5) the impor-

tance of varied assessments as an integral part of instruction, and (6) the importance

of professional growth for self-improvement with the ultimate goal of providing

the best instruction and classroom environment for all students.

In turn, these six content standards contain subsets of standards, supporting

explanations, and rubrics by which education programs can determine the extent to

which they are preparing future foreign language teachers. The rubric measure

terms (

Approaches Standard, Meets Standard, and Exceeds Standard

) are particu-

larly helpful in determining where program fine-tuning may be needed, and it is

this information that can be particularly instructive to foreign language curriculum

supervisors and practicing foreign language teachers. Since many of the new teachers

will be entering the teaching field with NCATE preparation, the current teaching

field would do well to use these rubrics to self-assess and make determinations

regarding what professional development is needed. Such self-assessments based

on these rubrics could support a curriculum specialist in designing or requesting

funding for professional development opportunities. In this way the foreign lan-

guage classroom becomes a receptive and continuous improvement environment,

edifying for newly certified teachers, current teachers, and most of all, the students.

These six content standards add another dimension to the term “highly qualified”

teachers.

Obviously, “highly qualified” teachers should possess good teaching skills,

but what are “good teaching skills”? A definition of these goals, not a part of the

original bill as it was first introduced in the House, was added to H.R. 2211 (en-

grossed as agreed by the House) “Ready to Teach Act of 2003, Teacher Quality

Enhancement Grants, section 201” to provide some insight into what some legisla-

tors considered to constitute “good teaching skills,” described as follows:

(9) TEACHING SKILLS: The term “teaching skills” means skills that

(A) are based on scientifically based research;

(B) enable teachers to effectively convey and explain subject

matter content;

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

(D) use strategies that

(i) are specific to subject matter;

(ii) include ongoing assessment of student learning;

(iii) focus on identification and tailoring of academic

instruction to students’s [

sic

] specific learning needs; and

(iv) focus on classroom management.

What models are available for foreign language teachers to evaluate their per-

sonal performance in relation to defining “good teaching”? The National Board

certification process sponsored by the National Board for Professional Teaching

Standards (NBPTS)² presents a wonderful opportunity for teachers, particularly

veteran teachers, to hone their skills and advance student learning. Teachers both

in their portfolio and the one-day assessment center activities are evaluated on 14

standards. The NBPTS publication,

World Languages Other Than English Stan-

dards

(2001), produced by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards,

provides elaboration of these standards and asks prospective candidates to reflect

upon how they are currently meeting these foreign language standards and perhaps

to consider some steps to take to address perceived deficiencies. The following

titles from the table of content represent the 14 standards:

Knowledge of Students, Fairness, Knowledge of Language, Knowledge

of Culture, Knowledge of Language Acquisition, Multiple Paths to Learn-

ing, Articulation of Curriculum and Instruction, Learning Environment,

Instructional Resources, Assessment, Reflection as Professional Growth,

Schools/Families and Communities, Professional Community, and Advo-

cacy for Education in World Languages Other Than English

While some states and local school systems may offer either financial assis-

tance or salary incentives for those undertaking this certification process, teachers

can at least self-assess their own standing regarding the standards presented in this

document whether or not they pursue the certification. Castor (2002) of NBPTS

says, “I routinely heard from participating teachers that the process of seeking this

unique credential was the best form of professional development they had ever

experienced, because it forced them to re-examine and rethink their teaching.” Of

course, many foreign language teachers are already addressing these standards and

would want to pursue obtaining the certification.

These standards, closely related to those found in the NCATE materials, pro-

vide an excellent measure for all foreign language teachers. It should be noted that

among the committee members who developed the standards are past and present

ACTFL Executive Council members as well as other noted foreign language edu-

cators. Many language organizations are offering assistance with the certification

process or facets of the process that will enable teachers to be successful partici-

pants and, of course, “highly qualified.” The NBPTS website² lists the foreign

language teachers who are designated as “National Board Certified Teachers.”

No Child Left Behind in Foreign Language Education 5

Another document,

Model Standards for Licensing Beginning Foreign Lan-

guage Teachers: A Resource for State Dialogue

, produced by the Interstate New

Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC)³ and sponsored by the

Council of Chief State School Officers, addresses similar standards found in the

NCATE and NBPTS documents. Likewise, the INTASC standards exist in many

content areas. The committee charged with developing the INTASC foreign lan-

guage standards correlated the 10 basic INTASC core principles to the performance

expectations for a foreign language teacher. As a result, the following titles repre-

sent the standards for evaluation of effective foreign language teaching:

Content Knowledge, Learner Development, Diversity of Learners, Instruc-

tional Strategies, Learning Environment, Communication, Planning for

Instruction, Assessment, Reflective Practice and Professional Develop-

ment, and Community

Additional information found in the “standards context” provides teachers with

an in-depth understanding of each standard and yet another opportunity to self-

assess.

The purpose of the INTASC document is to provide direction for setting poli-

cies pertaining to licensure, program approval, and professional development of

quality foreign language teachers. While this consortium was created in 1987, the

addition of the foreign language component is as recent as 2001-2002, when the

committee was formed and work was initiated on the foreign language standards.

ACTFL and many of the language specific organizations played a major role in

helping to shape the INTASC foreign language standards in line with research-

based effective practices. Other committee members included practicing teachers

of foreign language education, teacher educators, school leaders, and state educa-

tional agency personnel. As state educational agencies begin to address the issue of

“highly qualified” teachers and ensuring that “no child is left behind,” they will

doubtlessly rely upon this document already supported by state superintendents or

chief school officers. INTASC is already in the process of creating a test that will

assess a beginning teacher’s knowledge of pedagogical practices and a set of per-

formance assessments for new teachers to show that a teacher can design, implement,

and evaluate lessons for diverse learners. Teachers, supervisors of foreign language

teachers, colleges of education, and foreign language organizations would do well

to review these standards as a means of designing activities and programs for help-

ing teachers obtain the “highly qualified” designation.

Finally, for the K-12 teachers who want to focus primarily on instruction and

student evaluation to ensure that they are using the best practices to leave no child

behind, the

ACTFL Performance Guidelines for K-12 Learners

(1998), provide a

barometer for how well students should be performing at the novice, intermediate,

and pre-advanced stages. These guidelines are grounded in the

Standards for For-

eign Language Learning in the 21st Century

(NSFLEP, 1999), which define what

the K-12 foreign language curriculum should look like. Furthermore, these guide-

lines are arranged by modes of communication:

interpersonal

(face-to-face

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

communication, as well as personal letters and e-mail),

interpretive

(one-way read-

ing or listening), and

presentational

(one-way writing and speaking). Within these

modes, language descriptors are provided for

comprehensibility

comprehension

language control

vocabulary

cultural awareness

, and

communication strategies

The following example shows the progression of one guideline for “Comprehensi-

bility/Interpersonal” across the three stages.

Comprehensibility (How well are they understood?)/ InterpersonalComprehensibility (How well are they understood?)/ Interpersonal

Comprehensibility (How well are they understood?)/ Interpersonal

Reproduced with permission from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

Using the guidelines chart from which the above sample is taken, teachers can

easily identify the stage for a particular group of students and further identify the

number of descriptors their students can satisfactorily complete. By so doing, teach-

ers have the opportunity to plan instruction for the students who are not performing

at the level suggested by the descriptors. The performance chart lists student char-

acteristics and behaviors that can serve as benchmarks for noting student progress

in demonstrating language proficiency. It is also important to note that the Na-

tional Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP) test in foreign language

(Spanish), scheduled for administration in 2004, uses the following tasks to evalu-

ate student skills: interpretive listening and reading, interpersonal listening and

speaking, and presentational writing.

ConclusionConclusion

Conclusion

The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), speaking

through its recent publication, the

Complete Curriculum: Ensuring a Place for the

Arts and Foreign Languages in America’s Schools

(2003), considers “highly quali-

fied teachers” important enough to list steps to be taken in its first 3 of 10

recommendations to ensure that foreign languages and the arts remain strong and

viable subjects of study. As noted by Tesser and Abbott (2003), a core group of

dedicated foreign language professionals, with input from the wider language and

educational community, has helped to develop consistent themes, measures, ex-

pectations, and philosophical underpinnings to the documents mentioned in this

discussion. The language profession is the better for this unified approach because

Novice LearnersNovice Learners

Novice Learners

Rely primarily on

memorized phrases

and short sentences

during highly predict-

able interactions on

very familiar topics ...

Intermediate LearnersIntermediate Learners

Intermediate Learners

Express their own

thoughts using sentences

and strings of sentences

when interacting on

familiar topics in present

time ...

Pre-AdvancedPre-Advanced

Pre-Advanced

LearnersLearners

Learners

Narrate and describe

using connected

sentences and para-

graphs in present and

other time frames when

interacting on topics of

personal, school and

community interests ...

No Child Left Behind in Foreign Language Education 7

it offers sound research-based and agreed-upon directions for what constitutes for-

eign language teacher quality. The issue of defining a “highly qualified” teacher is

perplexing, and, as Berry (2002) suggests, it will definitely not be productive if

federal guidelines focus primarily on subject matter competence. Nonetheless, the

foreign language profession is indeed very fortunate to have many well-crafted

collaborating models of what goes into making teachers “highly qualified” and, in

the final analysis, what will produce more fluent users of foreign languages.

NotesNotes

Notes

¹ More detailed information regarding the application process, workshops and

timeline for the first accreditation and standards can be located at the NCATE

Web site: <www.ncate.org>.

² Information on becoming National Board Certified can be obtained at the

NBPTS Web site: <www.nbpts.org>.

³ Information regarding INTASC and for ordering a bound copy of the

Foreign

Language Standards

document can be located at the Web site for the Council

of Chief State School Officers: <www.ccsso.org>.

ReferencesReferences

References

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). (1998).

ACTFL

performance guidelines for K-12 learners

(with fold-out Assessment Chart).

Yonkers, NY: author.

Berry, B. (October 2002).

What it means to be a “highly qualified teacher.”

South-

east Center for Teacher Quality. Retrieved January 4, 2004, from http://

www.teachingquality.org/resources/pdfs/definingHQ.pdf

Castor, B. (2002). Better assessment for better teaching.

Education Week, 22,

28-30.

National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). (2003).

The com-

plete curriculum: Ensuring a place for the arts and foreign languages in

America’s schools.

Alexandria, VA: NASBE.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). (2001).

World lan-

guages other than English standards (for teachers of students ages 3-18+).

Arlington, VA: NBPTS.

National Governors Association. (2002, July 26).

NCLB: Summary of teacher quality

legislation.

Retrieved January 4, 2004, http://www.nga.org/center/divisions/

1,1188,C_ISSUE_Brief^D_4163,00.html

National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project. (1999).

Standards for

foreign language learning in the 21st century

. Yonkers, NY: ACTFL.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Office of Elementary and Secondary Educa-

tion. (2002). (H.R. 1, 107th Cong. (2001), P.L. 107-110). Student Achievement

and School Accountability Conference (October 2002). Slide 12. http://

www.ed.gov/admins/tchrqual/learn/hqt/edlite-slide012.html

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

Ready to Teach Act of 2003. (H.R. 2211, 108th Cong. 2003; engrossed). Retrieved

January 4, 2004, from http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:2:./temp/

~c108rd1bvY::

Tesser, C. C., & Abbott, M. (2003). INTASC model foreign language standards for

beginning teacher licensing and development. In C. M. Cherry & L. Bradley

(Eds.),

Dimension 2003: Models for excellence in second language education

(pp. 65-73). Valdosta, GA: Southern Conference on Language Teaching.

Title IX, 9101(23) “Highly qualified [definition]” (C). Elementary and Secondary

Education Act (2002). P.L. 107-110. Retrieved January 4, 2004, http://

www.ed.gov/legislation/ESEA02/pg107.html

Using Learner and Using Learner and

Using Learner and

eacher Preparationeacher Preparation

eacher Preparation

tandards to Reform a Language Majortandards to Reform a Language Major

tandards to Reform a Language Major

Rosalie M. CheathamRosalie M. Cheatham

Rosalie M. Cheatham

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

AbstractAbstract

Abstract

While foreign language educators in many university programs have

worked to modify courses to reflect the emerging research on the best

practices for enabling language acquisition by student learners, the overall

curriculum design of language majors remains very similar to structures

in place more than two decades ago. This article describes a series of

initiatives that have led to a major redesign of a French curriculum at a

state university that uses as its organizing principle the two recently de-

veloped professional Standards documents: the Standards for Foreign

Language Learning in the 21st Century (National Standards in Foreign

Language Education Project, 1999) and the ACTFL Program Standards

for the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers (2002).

BackgroundBackground

Background

For over a decade language department faculty at the University of Arkansas

at Little Rock have been actively engaged in systematic initiatives to establish mean-

ingful assessment of programs and students reflecting the most current professional

research. These efforts have resulted in content revisions in a number of courses in

French, German, and Spanish and in the use of oral proficiency interviews and

written assessment for all language majors immediately prior to graduation as a

measure of program assessment. Since many faculty believe that course grades are

the most accurate reflection of a student’s language ability, a specific level of mas-

tery has not been requisite to graduation. The syllabi of skill courses have changed

substantially over the decades to reflect current understandings of best practices

for language instruction, but the overall curricular structure leading to a major or

minor has remained remarkably similar to that of decades earlier, when neither

proficiency nor standards were bywords of professional language educators.

The current modifications in the French program that have utilized both the

Learner Standards K-16

, ACTFL Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the

21st Century

(National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999)

and the recently approved Teacher Standards

, ACTFL Program Standards for the

Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers

(2002) as the organizing principle have

resulted in the most significant structural change in the curriculum to date. These

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

changes have been specifically designed to assure that all students acquire a more

comprehensive and appropriate command of the target language than was common

in a more traditional program.

The ChallengeThe Challenge

The Challenge

Both language and pedagogy faculty in the department have been actively

engaged using federal and state-funded grants in advocating to K-12 foreign lan-

guage educators throughout the state the appropriate application of the learner

standards in their programs. There has, however, been little incentive to effect the

changes required to embrace the learner standards in the university curriculum

until the recent approval of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Lan-

guages (ACTFL)/National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)

Teacher Preparation Standards in October 2002. This new impetus results from the

fact that Arkansas law requires that an institution of higher education be NCATE-

accredited in order for its pre-service teacher candidates to be eligible for licensure.

Failure to attain the requisite levels of proficiency by language teacher candidates

could, therefore, jeopardize the ability of licensure candidates in all disciplines at

the university to obtain teaching credentials. The specific imperative that has led to

the curricular reform described below is to assure that licensure candidates in French

have the maximum opportunity to attain the skill levels required by the approved

Teacher Preparation Standards.

This challenge is exacerbated by two additional realities. One of the require-

ments for teacher candidates to attain the knowledge, skills, and dispositions

described in the

ACTFL Program Standards for the Preparation of Foreign Lan-

guage Teachers

(2002) is “an ongoing assessment of candidates’ oral proficiency

and provision of diagnostic feedback to candidates concerning their progress in

meeting required levels of proficiency” (p. 24). Additionally, “candidates who teach

languages such as French ... must speak at a minimum level of Advanced-Low as

defined in the

ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines-Speaking

(1999)” (p. 21). While this

level of oral skill is understandably desirable and a reasonable minimum for class-

room teachers, it is a significant pedagogical challenge to university students, as

most of the program’s current graduates begin their study of French at the univer-

sity level. A decade-long effort to provide the highest quality instruction for all

students and recognition of challenges presented by the new Teacher Preparation

Standards are evident in the revised curriculum.

The Early InitiativesThe Early Initiatives

The Early Initiatives

Like their colleagues at many other institutions, faculty at UALR have for

many years attempted to keep abreast of the most current trends and research ini-

tiatives in foreign language pedagogy. Therefore, as proficiency guidelines were

first developed and subsequently codified in the 1986 publication of the

American

Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/ Interagency Language Roundtable

(ACTFL/ILR) Proficiency Guidelines,

a documented shift began in the lower-level

skill courses toward an attempt to provide instruction that enabled students to com-

Using Standards to Reform a Language Major 11

municate in the target language. Modified Oral Proficiency Interviews (MOPI)

were required in many language skill courses and students in some academic pro-

grams outside the language department were required to attain at least an interview

rating of Intermediate-Mid in order to satisfy degree requirements. Although these

early efforts were somewhat primitive when compared to the expectations and ac-

tivities in modern textbooks and the opportunities for skill enhancement embodied

in various technological applications hardly envisioned at the time, the change

from teaching students about the language to enabling them to communicate in the

language has been embraced for years.

The first substantive curricular change occurred in the mid-1980s, when three

levels of conversation courses were added to the French program. The major was

revised to require all students to complete as a part of their degree requirements at

least one three-semester-hour conversation course at the intermediate or advanced

level as well as a more traditional stipulation for a course in culture and civilization

and at least two courses in literature. The reality, of course, was that apart from the

conversation and culture offerings, the only other content available was in the canon

of literature courses defined either by century or genre. However, the formal shift

to valuing student output of language began at this point.

The next documented institutional effort to update curricular content occurred

in 1992, when the entire language department at UALR became actively engaged

in the Reforming the Major Project, sponsored by the American Association of

Colleges and Universities. Working as a committee of the whole, the foreign lan-

guage faculty determined that the original

ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines

(1986)

should be the organizing principle for skill courses at all levels and, in addition,

that all students should be assessed using the common metric of the proficiency

guidelines. The faculty in each language worked collaboratively to develop an as-

sessment instrument in each language that included testing of speaking, listening,

writing, and reading skills. This assessment was to serve not only as a record of

student skill but also as a measure of the effectiveness of course instruction in

improving each student’s proficiency in each skill. Each student was tracked so

that it would be possible to determine the relative success of students who began

their study of the language at the university level, as measured against those who

had studied over a period of years in K-12 programs or who had studied or lived

abroad.

By chance, the assessment decisions that were a result of the Reforming the

Major Project coincided with the university-wide implementation of a new lan-

guage requirement for students pursuing a bachelor of arts degree. This provision

required students to complete nine semester hours of a language (specifically six

hours at the elementary level and three hours at the intermediate level) or demon-

strate equivalent proficiency. Eager to document to what extent, with what rapidity,

and in which courses student proficiency increased, initial determinations of the

department faculty provided for the newly developed assessment instruments to be

used at three points. The first administration was to be near the completion of the

nine-semester-hour requirement; the second was a course completion component

in the advanced skills sequence required for majors and minors; and finally, the

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

same assessment instrument was administered to students immediately prior to gradu-

ation. Although this emphasis on assessment was a well-intentioned effort to

document individual student progress and the effectiveness of course sequencing

in improving proficiency, it soon became evident that the logistics of administering

and grading three assessments per student were a burden, took away from instruc-

tional time, and helped neither the overall language acquisition of the student nor

provided essential data in the determination of the effectiveness of the course work

leading to the major. Performance on the multiple assessments seemed to reflect

student interest and effort to demonstrate proficiency as much as it showed real

progress in knowledge or ability. The faculty decided, then, to administer the lis-

tening, reading, and writing assessment only once, at the end of each student’s

program of study, and to continue the use of the oral proficiency interview.

The Second-YThe Second-Y

The Second-Y

ear Coursesear Courses

ear Courses

When in 1996 the department faculty became a part of the national Language

Mission Project (Maxwell, Johnson, & Sperling, 1999) proficiency-oriented as-

sessment was already requisite for all students majoring in a foreign language, and

the faculty had enough experience to be well aware of the limitations of assessment

instruments to demonstrate course or program quality. The Language Mission Project

provided a new opportunity for department faculty to undertake a collaborative

exploration of the purposes and practices of foreign language teaching and learn-

ing. Since a significant focus of participation in this project was on assuring that

the language curricula reflected the institution’s mission and because the language

requirement after 4 years was fully operational, department faculty determined to

focus on the content of the final “required” course, the third-semester (Intermedi-

ate I) course. This decision was made as faculty recognized that many students

were taking the third-semester course primarily to complete a requirement, whereas

previously most students had enrolled in a third semester either as the first step

toward a major or toward a minor. Where the course had previously served as a

beginning for serious language study, it had become an ending for a large majority

of students.

French faculty made a key decision to substantially alter the course content

from the traditional systematic reentry of structures taught in the elementary course

sequence toward a serious attempt to organize the syllabus around intermediate-

level proficiency guidelines. Believing that students who completed nine semester

hours of language study should be able to “do something” with their language and

knowing that a one-semester intermediate course was “too short” to assure that

students would achieve a sophisticated level of skill mastery, the faculty deter-

mined to organize the course around the intermediate-level speaking and writing

proficiency guidelines, wherein students are expected to be able to survive in the

target culture and to make themselves understood in predictable situations. Tests

and quizzes were minimized, and a series of three projects was implemented, each

of which was designed around real-world activities and focused on both skills and

content that students would need in order to demonstrate culturally appropriate

survival skills.

Using Standards to Reform a Language Major 13

While the exact format of the project emphasis has varied, each relates to

survival. Topics include requirements for a successful study abroad experience, for

working abroad, or for employment with a local company seeking an employee

who can communicate minimally in French. Required activities include having

students present themselves to a potential host family by writing a letter of intro-

duction and recording an audio- or videotape on which they talk about themselves

for the family or the university abroad and describe their family, hobbies, job, and

school interests. Another project option requires students to develop an appropri-

ate

curriculum vitae

for presentation to a company with an opening in its international

department for someone with some communicative competence in French. All stu-

dents must be able to seek basic information in French required to move into an

apartment and set up housekeeping or to live with a family in the target culture who

do not speak English. Because the language proficiency required for these projects

is in the intermediate range, the skills students must demonstrate are both reason-

able and appropriate for anyone completing the nine-semester-hour requirement. A

major success of the project focus is that students end the course and their required

language study with an understanding that they can use French for something rel-

evant. Prior to the implementation of this concept, most students completed the

course far more aware of the limitations of their knowledge (as evidenced by errors

on tests) than of what they could accomplish.

The other fundamental change that this project focus required was that the

choice of structure and grammar to be taught be determined as a derivative of the

project content, as opposed to the more common systematic grammar review that

most intermediate textbooks provide. For example, students are taught linguistic

skills necessary to seek real-world information, as opposed to working on exer-

cises that use all the interrogative adverbs (e.g., “I’m looking for the closest bank,”

rather than “Where is the closest bank located?”; or “I need to buy a télécarte,”

instead of “Where should I go to buy a télécarte?”). In an attempt to provide stu-

dents with authentic and manageable input, the faculty selected texts published by

French publishing companies for teaching French as a foreign language. While by

no means a perfect solution, the

Café Crème

series (Di Giura & Trevisi, 1998)

provided a different format for accessing the needed content than was available in

other materials and had the added advantage of being relatively contemporary and

inexpensive for a one-semester course requirement.

One significant component of the exercise and assessment items contained in

these books is the usage of DELF-style activities (Commission Nationale du DELF

et du DALF, 2001). These activities are similar to many situation-based exercises

in American texts but tend to utilize more culturally authentic materials and native-

level language. While not a direct parallel to the Proficiency Guidelines that are

now so fundamental to language instruction in the United States, the competency

required for success on the DELF (Diplôme d’Etudes en Langue Française)

pre-

mier degré

and

second degré

or even the DALF (Diplôme Approfondi de Langue

Française) shares many commonalities with the skill progression reflected in the

Proficiency Guidelines

. Both DELF and DALF are internationally recognized ex-

aminations and as such provide external validation to both students and university

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

administrators that the language and skills that students are learning are applicable

beyond the borders of the course in which they are enrolled at the university. The

intent of DELF and DALF, similar to that of the

ACTFL Proficiency

Guidelines

, is

to evaluate the know-how of students and not simply their linguistic knowledge

independent of its context or usage.

As both levels 2 and 3 of the

Café Crème

texts (DiGiura & Trevisi, 1998) were

used in both the intermediate and advanced skills courses, the students became

clearly aware that know-how was the goal. This emphasis on know-how and profi-

ciency was again reinforced when the

TFI

(

Test de français international

, 2001)

first became available. It is a multiple-choice test designed to assess a student’s

ability to understand, speak, read, and write French as it is used in the international

workplace and in everyday life. The faculty decided to use the

TFI

in lieu of the

assessment instrument developed by the department and accompany it with the

oral proficiency interview, so that it would be possible to provide students with an

internationally recognized assessment of their proficiency in French. This decision

changed the role of the required “completion of the major” assessment from a

program assessment to a student assessment, but no other curricular modifications

occurred. The second semester of the intermediate course continued where the

required Intermediate I course ended, followed by a two-semester advanced skills

sequence, conversation classes, and relatively traditional culture, civilization, and

literature courses. French faculty discussed numerous options for broadening the

scope of curricular revisions, but it was not until the standards became the new

focus that reform in upper-level courses began to take shape.

The The

The

tandards tandards

tandards

and the Curriculumand the Curriculum

and the Curriculum

With the publication of the Learner Standards K-16 in the

Standards for For-

eign Language Learning in the 21st Century

(National Standards in Foreign

Language Education Project, 1999), a new paradigm emerged in language instruc-

tion to reflect the understanding that language acquisition can be appropriate and

attainable for all students when it is appropriately focused on what students should

know and be able to do. Subsequently, the development of the

ACTFL Program

Standards for the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers

(2002) brought a

new imperative to the level of skill acquisition for pre-service teachers. As stated

earlier, pre-service teacher preparation is a major issue for programs in Arkansas,

as the possibility for all disciplines at the university to have candidates obtain li-

censure hinges on the demonstrated ability of students in each licensure area to

meet or exceed the requirements of their discipline for initial licensure. Many stu-

dents who continue into upper-level French classes begin their language study at

the university level, and few of them begin their study of French with the intent of

becoming K-12 teachers. Furthermore, the teacher standards require a demonstra-

tion of progress over a period of time. Therefore, the faculty determined to use

both the learner and the teacher preparation standards as the guiding principle for

the next step in curricular modification, and any revisions would be applicable to

all students. As a result, if students who had not previously intended to become

Using Standards to Reform a Language Major 15

licensure candidates decided to do so near the end of their undergraduate academic

career, the instruction they would have received and the artifacts that would have

been retained would enable them to have the requisite credentials to seek licensure

as though such had been their original intent.

The new licensure requirement is that a candidate be able to document progress

in skill development over a period of time. Hence, the need to retain artifacts of

course work throughout the progression of courses leading to a degree is essential.

Since measuring by “standards” in any context should raise the bar on student

performance criteria, it was anticipated that making the standards applicable to

every student would have the added benefit of improving the proficiency of all

students in each skill area.

The focus of instruction shifts away from the teacher as the one who imparts

knowledge. The new research referenced in the

ACTFL Program Standards for the

Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers

(2002) suggests that “the course work

taken in the language major influences how the future teacher conceptualizes what

it means to know the target language, culture and literature and most importantly,

how the language is taught” (p. 7). Within these

Standards

it is understood that

standards 1 and 2 are content standards and deal specifically with the outcomes of

the course work in the language classroom. The other standards are more directly

connected to the pedagogical skills that pre-service teachers must acquire as part

of language pedagogy training and are not directly applicable to the French cur-

riculum modifications detailed here. It is clear, however, that if a university program

expects its pre-service teachers to meet or exceed the Teacher Preparation Stan-

dards and qualify for licensure, it is essential that language departments take seriously

the content knowledge required. It is pursuant to this reality that the final stage of

curriculum reorganization took place.

What have come to be referred to as the “five

s” of the learner standards–

Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities–have

become the rubrics for the organization of the French curriculum beyond the initial

three-course requirement sequence. Rather than continuing a two-semester inter-

mediate skills sequence, one of which fulfilled the requirement for the bachelor of

arts degree, followed by two semesters of advanced skills focusing traditionally on

the productive skills of speaking and writing, the second intermediate and both

advanced skill courses were modified to reflect the content of the Communication

standard. Entitled “Integrated Skills I, II, and III” respectively, each course is inde-

pendent of the others and focuses on one of the three “communicative modes”:

interpersonal, interpretive, or presentational.

Clearly much of the content required in these courses is similar to that of ear-

lier iterations of “proficiency-oriented” instruction. However, using the particular

mode as the organizing principle assures that it is the student production that is

important, while the specific activities or content may vary from semester to se-

mester and from student to student, depending on their individual interests.

Newspaper and magazine articles on current events selected from Internet sources

may provide the input for students to enhance their ability to understand written

French in the interpretive course, while students may develop Web pages or

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

PowerPoint presentations on a topic discussed in a course from another discipline

in the presentational course.

The challenge for faculty is to assure that content and input are appropriate

and that the expected productive outcomes can be measured in a way that encour-

ages students to progress. A newer series of texts,

Reflets

(Capelle & Gidon, 2000)

is being used for aural input along with

Communication Progressive du Français

avec 365 activités

(Miquel, 2003), a series of thematically oriented interpersonal

exercises, to support the three-course communicative mode courses.

The next phase of curricular modification focuses on the Cultures, Connec-

tions, and Comparisons standards. Under this grouped rubric, there are three culture

and civilization courses that emphasize the perspectives, practices, and products

that describe the Cultures standard, enabling students to gain knowledge and un-

derstanding of Francophone cultures throughout the world (Connections) and

compare these behaviors to their own (Comparisons).

Finally, a series of seminars and practica uses a variety of sources to provide

the opportunity for content-based study and for acquiring a more profound under-

standing of linguistic patterns and systems than was contained in the lower-level

courses (Comparisons). Up to 12 semester hours of credit may be granted for study

abroad, and receiving credit for an internship experience in the target culture is an

additional option. Both opportunities give life to the Communities standard within

the undergraduate curriculum. The traditional century- and genre-based literature

courses have not yet been formally removed from the curriculum, but they are not

being offered as the new curriculum design is implemented.

As all of these substantive curricular modifications are phased in, beginning

with the 2003-2004 academic year, and as the major is reorganized to reflect the

new rubrics, the process is rendered even more significant as the faculty endeavors

to accommodate the avowed aim of the

ACTFL Program Standards for the Prepa-

ration of Foreign Language Teachers

(2002), which

are the most recent and thorough attempt to establish clear expectations

for teacher preparation and reflect a reconceptualization of foreign lan-

guage teaching . . . based on the assumption that learning to teach is a

long-term, complex, developmental process that starts with competencies

in language and culture and operates through participation in the social

practices and context associated with learning and teaching. (p. 5)

It is too early to know whether the change in structure of the French major and

the focus on learner and teacher standards will result in a significant improvement

in the proficiency level in all skills for all students or whether Advanced Low oral

proficiency will become a reality for a significant percentage of students. It is,

however, already evident that students understand clearly that the opportunities for

language acquisition and output are practical, real world, and attainable. This un-

derstanding is reflected in both their enthusiasm and in the quality of their

performance. Anecdotal and experiential evidence suggests that as enthusiasm for

Using Standards to Reform a Language Major 17

language production and quality of communicative competence increase, overall

skill mastery will be demonstrably enhanced.

ReferencesReferences

References

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. (2002).

ACTFL pro-

gram standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers.

Yonkers,

NY: ACTFL.

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. (1986).

ACTFL profi-

ciency guidelines

. New York: ACTFL.

American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. (1999).

ACTFL profi-

ciency guidelines–speaking

. New York: ACTFL.

Capelle, G., & Gidon, N. (2000).

Reflets, Méthode de français

Paris: Hachette.

Commission Nationale du DELF et du DALF, Centre International d’Études

Pédagogiques. (2001).

Guide des sujets du DELF et du DALF.

Paris: Didier.

Di Giura, M., & Trevisi, S. (1998).

Café Crème

. Paris: Hachette.

Maxwell, D., Johnson, J. S., & Sperling, J. (1999). Language mission project: A

report of findings.

Liberal Education, 85

, 40-47.

Miquel, C. (2003).

Communication progressive du français

. Paris: Clé Interna-

tional.

National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project. (1999).

Standards for

foreign language learning in the 21st century.

Yonkers, NY: ACTFL.

Test de français international

. (2001). Kingston, ON, Canada: Chauncey Group

International.

blank page 18

tudent Electronic Portfolio tudent Electronic Portfolio

tudent Electronic Portfolio

AssessmentAssessment

Assessment

Denise Egéa-KuehneDenise Egéa-Kuehne

Denise Egéa-Kuehne

Louisiana State University

AbstractAbstract

Abstract

A brief review of the traditional types of assessment used in second

language education is followed by a discussion of the limitations of stan-

dardized testing. The author then addresses the challenge of assessing a

student’s development over time with a performance-based approach,

showing how one alternative assessment form, the electronic portfolio,

can help teachers keep track of a student’s progress over a long period of

time and also provide valuable information for curriculum specialists,

principals, school boards, parents, and the community. The technologies

necessary to support the development of electronic portfolios and its step-

by-step procedures are described.

BackgroundBackground

Background

As foreign language educators, we constantly have to test, evaluate, and assess

our students. On the basis of these results, we are expected to make informed deci-

sions as to their level of achievement and progression with respect to predeter-

mined norms and criteria, to adjust our instruction accordingly, and to provide

information to schools and educational agencies. In 1996, a new educational tool

was made available to all members of the profession when the American Council

on the Teaching of Foreign Languages published the final draft of the

Standards

for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century

(National Standards in For-

eign Language Education Project). Although the document includes 12 sample

progress indicators for grades 4, 8, and 12 that define student progress in meeting

the standards, these progress indicators are not performance standards themselves,

and it was left up to individual states and school districts to determine performance

standards for their students. Besides asking for performance-based assessment,

content standards, which indicate what students should know and be able to do,

raise the issue of documenting students’ increased competency in subject matter

and of doing so over a period of time.

Educational Quality and Educational Quality and

Educational Quality and

Assessment in Foreign LanguageAssessment in Foreign Language

Assessment in Foreign Language

Several terms are used to refer to gathering information on foreign language

learners, interpreting it, and making informed decisions in a systematic fashion.

Although used interchangeably at times, the terms “testing,” “assessment,” and

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

“evaluation” are not synonymous. Testing can be defined as a means of determin-

ing knowledge, and it refers to the performance of the task, written or oral. On the

other hand, “assessment,” according to Fenton (1996), “is the collection of rel-

evant information that may be relied on for making decisions.” When a standard

and a decision-making system are applied “to assessment data to produce judg-

ments about the amount and adequacy of the learning that has taken place,” an

evaluation is being made. The individuals making an informed decision are re-

ferred to as the “audience.” The types of decisions that can be made are as varied as

the types of possible audiences. In the schools, they are the teachers and learners,

parents, board members, and administrators. Outside the schools, they may be leg-

islators, policy makers, college admissions personnel, scholarship committees, and

accreditation or funding agencies that are looking for feedback to assess the amount

of learning that has taken place and the efficiency of the instruction.

Traditional assessment focuses on grades and ranking based on knowledge,

curriculum, and skills. Classroom traditional assessment is based on quizzes, home-

work assignments, and standardized tests measuring the students’ results against a

norm (standardized norm-referenced tests) or a criterion (proficiency-based, crite-

rion-referenced tests). The common practice of using standardized testing to mea-

sure students’ aptitudes, knowledge, and skills has met with wide support because

of several factors. Standardized tests can be administered easily at a relatively low

cost, and since their results are quantitative, they can easily be analyzed through

statistical procedures and reported or transmitted at a low cost, briefly and rapidly.

As a consequence, the information they provide can be made available on a wide

scale, allowing comparisons of student performance across school districts, states,

and even international borders. Most policy-makers, government agencies, busi-

nesses, or media, appreciating the advantages these tests offer and the authority

generally imparted to their numerical results, accept them as valid and reliable

indicators of quality education. Meanwhile, they can easily overlook the consider-

able variations that may exist in standardized testing.

Standardized tests have several limitations, and questions are raised concern-

ing their ability to measure accurately the quality of students’ learning and perfor-

mance, thereby revealing their inadequacy as a measure of what students know and

can do (content standards). Both research and practice have suggested that teach-

ing and testing should be closely connected. Oller pointed out that “perhaps the

essential insight of a quarter of a century of language testing (both research and

practice) is that good teaching and good testing are, or ought to be, nearly indistin-

guishable” (1991, p. 38). More recently, Terry stressed that “any material or tech-

nique that is effective for teaching a foreign language can also be used for testing”

(1998, p. 277). As a consequence, when teachers and students aim toward foreign

language content-standards-driven goals, striving to work with authentic materials

and contexts and completing real-world tasks, a new paradigm for assessment is

needed, calling for ongoing performance assessments of students’ progress toward

meeting these standards over a period of time.

Advances in research and theory and in technology indicate that it may be

possible to better assess the quality of education and students’ achievements by

Student Electronic Portfolio Assessment 21

taking into account multiple indicators of a student’s work. “Alternative assess-

ment approaches,” which focus on student-generated responses as opposed to choos-

ing among proposed responses, as in standardized multiple-choice tests, are also

designated as “authentic assessment,” “performance-based assessment,” and, more

recently, “portfolio assessment.”

Alternative Alternative

Alternative

Assessment and PortfoliosAssessment and Portfolios

Assessment and Portfolios

Authentic or performance-based assessment focuses on immediately observ-

able results, implemented through standards, tasks, criteria, and scoring rubrics.

Portfolio assessment adds another dimension, documenting the growth and devel-

opment of students

over a period of time

. Through the process of selecting among

their works and analyzing the selected works, students are led to self-evaluation

and the setting of future goals.

Out of discussions at a conference on “Aggregating Portfolio Data” held by

the Northwest Evaluation Association in Union, Washington, a group of educators

from seven states, including F. Leon Paulson, Pearl R. Paulson and Carol A. Meyer,

helped define a student’s portfolio as “a purposeful collection of student work that

exhibits the student’s efforts, progress, and achievements. The collection must in-

clude student participation in selecting contents, the criteria for selection, the crite-

ria for judging merit, and evidence of student self-reflection” (Paulson, Paulson, &

Meyer, 1991, p. 60). Stiggins (1994) adds that a portfolio is also “a means of

communicating about a student’s growth and development,” and is “not a form of

assessment” per se (p. 87). However, it can be used very effectively for perfor-

mance-based assessment because a portfolio holds examples of a student’s work

(artifacts), since some of those artifacts may be the results of performance assess-

ment and because the reflection on that work transforms those artifacts into “evi-

dence” of achievement.

One obvious advantage of portfolios is that they provide a richer picture of

student performance than do more traditional, so-called “objective” forms of test-

ing, and, most importantly, because they do so over a period of time. Traditional

portfolios can be standards-based and may consist of ring binders, notebooks, or

files divided into sections to organize the students’ work and to document their

level of achievement for each standard. These files and binders may be collected in

drawers, boxes, or other large containers. Photographs, audiotapes, and videotapes

have often been used to keep a record of students’ work. Advances in technology

have prompted the development of electronic and digital portfolios, which move

both the process and the resulting product into another dimension.

The development of electronic and digital portfolios is supported by two main

theoretical frameworks. Portfolio development literature (Danielson & Abrutyn,

1997) discusses collection, selection, reflection, and projection or direction. Mul-

timedia development research (Ivers & Barron, 1998) is concerned with assess-

ment and decision, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Elec-

tronic and digital portfolios involve the use of electronic technologies to enable

students and teachers to collect and organize artifacts in various media types (texts,

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

graphs, audio, video, etc.) and establish hypertext links to organize that material

and connect it across artifacts as well as to appropriate standards, especially in the

case of the standards-based portfolios.

There is a difference between electronic and digital portfolios. Electronic port-

folios contain artifacts that may be analyzed in analog form (e.g., videotapes), or

may be in computer-readable form (e.g., word processor documents). Digital port-

folios contain artifacts that have all been converted to computer-readable forms

(e.g., digitized or scanned). I shall refer to them below simply as “electronic port-

folios,” leaving the degree of digital integration up to individual choices in plan-

ning, design, and implementation.

Students’ electronic portfolios offer many advantages (Kankaanrana, Barrett,

& Hartnell-Young, 2000; Kilbane & Milman, 2003), because of the process in-

volved in creating them and because of the resulting products. The electronic port-

folio is learner-centered, and its creation provides ample opportunities for inciden-

tal learning and can increase technological and multimedia skills and knowledge,

from setting up folders to burning compact disks. It is an effective tool to demon-

strate students’ achievements and evidence of their having met standards, espe-

cially when it includes hypertext links to foreign language content standards and

educational technology standards (at national, regional, or district levels). From a

practical viewpoint, as opposed to traditional “files and boxes” portfolios, elec-

tronic portfolios use minimal storage space, are more portable, have a long shelf-

life and make it easy to create backup files. They are also more easily and widely

accessible and distributed, especially in the case of “Webfolios” (Nellen, 2000;

Sheingold, 1992). If they are on the Web, they also enable the replaying of perfor-

mance works at any time, and anywhere. On a more personal level, they can pro-

vide students and teachers with a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, increased

self esteem, and confidence, not only in their academic achievements but also in

their ability to use technology. In both cases, students can perceive tangible evi-

dence of their personal growth. Moreover, foreign language content standards and

educational technology standards offer an ideal framework for planning and orga-

nizing an electronic portfolio, and most states have adopted them by now.

On the other hand, some major issues have been raised about electronic port-

folios, including concerns about the infrastructure, the curriculum, the importance

of reflection, high-stakes portfolios, and the audience. The infrastructure available

in each school or classroom must be carefully considered: What types of technol-

ogy are available to students? Does the school or classroom environment include

computer equipment and software, network access, storage, publishing environ-

ment? How easy and frequent is their access? Questions concerning the curriculum

include these: When and at what point in the curriculum is the concept of electronic

portfolios introduced to the students? Does the curriculum include “appropriate”

digital artifacts for electronic portfolios? Is a course planned in the curriculum for

students to develop an electronic portfolio or at least get it underway? Does the

curriculum include procedures to assess electronic portfolios?

Student Electronic Portfolio Assessment 23

Reflection is an important component of the portfolio process, since it is the

step that moves portfolio development from mere gathering of data into a forma-

tive assessment and the learning process. At the 2000 American Educational Re-

search Association conference, Breault raised questions about high-stakes portfo-

lios and whether they include reflection, pointing out that they may undermine the

formative aspect of reflective portfolios. In addition, Breault cautioned against the

possible conflicting purposes, goals, and values between teacher and student in the

development of high-stakes portfolios. Posting a portfolio on the Internet raises

some specific audience issues regarding the quality and depth of reflection, intel-

lectual property rights, security, and access.

Electronic portfolios and especially digital portfolios present some challenges

in relation to the knowledge and skill levels they require with respect to the use of

various types of hardware and software. They also require professional and techni-

cal support, expensive equipment, and a greater investment of time and energy, the

flip side of often inspiring greater content, creativity, and depth. Furthermore, be-

cause not all members of the intended audience may have equal skills and access to

electronic portfolios, the portfolios will be restricted to those with the skills and

resources to view them.

Planning and Development of Foreign Language SPlanning and Development of Foreign Language S

Planning and Development of Foreign Language S

tudent Portfoliostudent Portfolios

tudent Portfolios

When planning a portfolio, one must always consider the purpose and the

audience, both of which will determine many of the following context factors. Dif-

ferent audiences, students of varied ages and at different levels, will have distinct

purposes and will require specific portfolio formats for storage, showcasing, as-

sessment, presentation, and publication.

The Portfolio Connection

, Burke, Fogarty, and Belgrad (1994) propose

several steps toward portfolio development. They include the following:

project

purposes, formulating the overall goals for the portfolio;

collect

and organize arti-

facts;

select

key artifacts, establishing priorities and determining what the content

of the portfolio will include;

interject

personal style in the choices of design, cover,

and layouts;

reflect

, labeling each artifact according to its meaning and value, ex-

plain why each artifact was selected and what its inclusion in the portfolio means;

inspect

to self-assess, indicating whether long-term and short-term goals are met

and how, pointing out evidences of strengths and weaknesses;

perfect

and evalu-

ate, refining the content and getting ready for evaluation or grading, bringing the

portfolio to the stage of a polished final draft or a final product;

connect

, sharing

the portfolio with someone, using it to establish a meaningful dialogue;

inject/eject

to refine and update the portfolio; and

respect

what has been accomplished by

showing the portfolio to an audience.

From these 10 steps, the authors define three options for portfolio develop-

ment: The

essential portfolio

, the most basic, involves three steps only: collect,

select, and reflect. For the

expanded portfolio

, they add three steps and suggest

these six: to project, collect, select, reflect, perfect, and connect. When all 10 steps

are followed, the result is the

elaborated portfolio

. Burke, Fogarty, and Belgrad do

not, however, include technology in the development of these portfolios.

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

In her analysis of portfolio development, Barrett (1999) uses Burke, Fogarty,

and Belgrad’s (1994) steps, but she includes technology and organizes the steps

differently, giving some of them (e.g., connect) a slightly different meaning. She

defines five stages of development and distinguishes different types of electronic

portfolios. The first step remains defining portfolio contexts and goals, to be fol-

lowed by the working portfolio, the reflective portfolio, the connected portfolio,

and the presentation portfolio. They are supported by five levels of electronic so-

phistication based on “ease of use,” including (1) word processing, (2) PowerPoint,

database files or hypermedia stacks, (3) Adobe Acrobat plus audio and video files,

(4) HTML-Web pages, and (5) multimedia authoring.

Two possible approaches are available in electronic portfolio development,

whether one chooses to use generic tools or a customized system. The generic tools

approach uses off-the-shelf software and more closely works on the model of col-

lections of artifacts in file boxes or binders. Although the structure of the portfolio

is then imposed by the developer of the chosen software, there is room for flexibil-

ity and creativity. If the cost for the infrastructure is lower, on the other hand, the

cost for training is higher; however, once the procedure has started, students can

continue to develop their portfolios, even after leaving the system.

The most common generic tools used to develop portfolios include relational

databases (e.g., FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Access), hypermedia cards formats (e.g.,

HyperStudio, HyperCard, Digital Chisel, SuperLink and commercial templates),

multimedia authoring software (e.g., Macromedia Authorware, Macromedia Di-

rector), network compatible hypermedia (e.g., HTML/WWW Pages, Adobe Acro-

bat/PDF), and office suite multimedia slide shows (e.g., PowerPoint, AppleWorks)

(Barrett, 2001a, 2001b).

The customized approach requires designing a networked system or buying a

proprietary software package. Although it offers record-keeping systems to collect

artifacts and reflections, because it is highly structured and uses on-line databases,

it can limit flexibility and creativity. The cost for infrastructure is high, but the cost

for training may be lower, depending on the design of the system. A serious issue is

what happens to the portfolios once students leave the system. In fact, there is no

“best” electronic program to develop electronic portfolios. Choices depend on the

assessment context, human and technological factors, such as students’ technologi-

cal skills, availability of personnel for professional and technical support, class-

room and school equipment and schedules, and even school district infrastructure.

Foreign Language SForeign Language S

Foreign Language S

tudent Electronic Portfolio Procedurestudent Electronic Portfolio Procedures

tudent Electronic Portfolio Procedures

For all portfolios, the first step is to identify their purpose and primary audi-

ence. In the foreign language class, the content standards (what students should

know and be able to do) will provide the goals and organizing framework, with the

sample progress indicators defining the students’ progress in meeting those stan-

dards. Identifying the foreign language content standards to be used is an essential

component of student portfolio planning. Once identified, electronic folders can be

set up to organize artifacts that will reflect the 5

s (Communication, Cultures,

Student Electronic Portfolio Assessment 25

Connections, Comparisons, and Communities) of the ACTFL Foreign Language

Standards (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1996), as

well as any existing state and local standards. When students plan electronic port-

folios, they must consider national (and available state and local) educational tech-

nology standards, which are available at the International Society for Technology

Education (ISTE) Web site, <http://www.iste.org/standards> and which should be

part of the organizing framework. During this first stage, it will be necessary to

identify all resources carefully: human resources (availability of personnel for pro-

fessional and technical support and advice) and material support (hardware, soft-

ware, time and curriculum constraints, skills constraints, and infrastructure).

In the second stage, collecting will be the primary activity of the students. The

purposes, audiences, goals, and future use of these artifacts will determine their

content. (Danielson & Abrutyn, 1997). Squirreling, packing, and storing will be

the main skills required at that stage. The development of an electronic portfolio,

an ongoing process that unfolds over a period of time, requires early planning,

setting up an electronic filing system, and using high-density storing devices such

as Zipdisks, Jaz disks, CD-ROM, and DVD-RAM.

Barton and Collins (1997) have suggested several types of evidence that can

be collected for a portfolio. They include artifacts and documents produced through

regular academic work, reproductions of student work produced outside the class-

room, attestations documenting students’ academic progress, and productions con-

sisting of documents prepared specifically for the portfolios. These productions

may be goal statements, students’ personal interpretations of each specific purpose

for their own portfolios, reflective statements written by students as they review

and organize the evidence they have collected in their portfolios, and captions, that

is, statements attached to each piece of evidence, articulating what it is, why it

qualifies as evidence, and for what it stands as evidence (Barton & Collins). It is at

the latter stage that students can interject their personal preferences by selecting

appropriate multimedia to add their own style and individuality into their respec-

tive portfolios.

Stage three requires that students select the artifacts that best represent achieve-

ment of the standards and goals, write a general reflective statement on achieving

each standard, and include specific reflective statements for each artifact chosen.

They must elaborate on why each was selected and on its meaning and value for the

portfolio. At this stage, Campbell, Melenyzer, Nettles, and Wyman (2000) and

Campbell, Cignetti, Melenyzer, Nettles, and Wyman (2001) suggest three helpful

questions: “What?” “So what?” “Now what?” They explain:

To use these questions, the student would first summarize the artifact that

documents the experience, in order to answer the question “What?” Sec-

ond, the student would reflect on what he or she learned and how this

leads to meet the standard, which answers the question “So what?” And

third, the student would address implications for future learning needed

and set forth refinements or adaptations, in order to answer “Now what?”

(Campbell, Melenyzer, et al., p. 22)

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

Such questions can easily be used as reflective prompts, and the last one will

lead students to notice patterns in the work they have collected, and to “project,”

that is, to look ahead and set goals for future learning (Danielson & Abrutyn, 1997).

Through this reflection and analysis, students become increasingly aware of them-

selves as learners. This awareness is the major step that separates a good portfolio

from a multimedia presentation, a glorified electronic résumé, or a digital scrap-

book and moves portfolio development from mere gathering of data into formative

assessment and learning process, turning it into a powerful developmental tool.

Students will also need to select appropriate technology tools and strategies in

order to enhance style, to individualize their portfolios, and to digitize images,

audio recordings, and video artifacts.

In the next stage, students organize the digital artifacts and establish connec-

tions, creating hypermedia links among standards, artifacts, and reflections. Through

the linking process they will identify patterns, then review and edit their portfolios

and goals, and share their portfolios to gain feedback and make necessary im-

provements. In this case, linking becomes learning. The transformation of artifacts

into evidence is not always clear. Linking reflections, artifacts and standards makes

the thinking process more explicit. Moreover, creating links from multiple per-

spectives and goals overcomes the linearity of the two-dimensional portfolio (Barrett,

1998). This process should lead students to making decisions on future learning

based on their portfolios.

The fifth and final stage leads to the presentation of the portfolio, real or vir-

tual, before the selected audience. But it must first be recorded (i.e., published) to

an appropriate presentation and storage medium (WWW, CDs, video, DVD).

An Ongoing Process Over An Ongoing Process Over

An Ongoing Process Over

imeime

ime

The development of an electronic portfolio is clearly not one linear process,

but rather a sequence that follows an iterative path, developing over time as well as

representing the students’ work over a period of time. Collecting and selecting

artifacts should be an ongoing endeavor, whereby students are encouraged to be-

come “digital pack rats” (Barrett, 1998). Planning for an electronic portfolio from

the start is a sound choice, as it will help set up an electronic filing system at an

early date. It will also encourage students not to leave either the collection or the

selection to the last minute. Another helpful early step is to identify the foreign

language content standards and the educational technology standards to be used as

an organizing framework. Electronic folders are created to store artifacts for each

standard, cross referencing those that demonstrate evidence of achieving and meeting

more than one standard. On an ongoing basis, sound clips and video clips should

be digitized and edited, using editing software (e.g., Sound Companion, Kaboom!,

Movie Player Pro, Avid Cinema, Adobe Premiere, or Final Cut).

The organization of the portfolio should be an ongoing process that includes

the creation of hypertext links among standards, artifacts, and reflections as the

connections are identified; and the insertion of bookmarks, thumbnails, movie links,

sound clips, and “buttons.” A portfolio matrix, using a spreadsheet or a simple

Student Electronic Portfolio Assessment 27

word processor table, can provide a single-page overview of such artifacts and

their connections. Through the use of a database program or a PDF form with

fields, a standard form can be designed to record reflective comments on each

artifact and each standard. Barrett (1998) also recommends the creation of an out-

line or story board, using word processor with outlining (e.g., Microsoft Word),

slide show with outlining (e.g., PowerPoint), or mapping software (e.g., Inspira-

tion). Because a table of contents is not only helpful, but necessary, as is keeping it

current, Barrett (2001a) proposes using a table to provide such information as a

“Portfolio at a Glance.”

The construction of an electronic portfolio should at first be considered a year-

long project, yet one should keep in mind that it can be developed to cover a longer

period of time and can be carried out throughout a student career.

ReferencesReferences

References

Barrett, H. C. (1998). Feature article: Strategic questions: What to consider when

planning for electronic portfolios,

Learning & Leading with Technology 25

(2):

6-13.

Barrett, H. C. (1999).

Electronic teaching portfolios

. Paper presented at the Soci-

ety for Information Technology and Teacher Education (SITE) Annual Con-

ference, San Antonio. Retrieved January 4, 2004, from

http://electronicportfolios.com/portfolios/site2000.html

Barrett, H. C. (2001a).

ICT Support for electronic portfolios and alternative as-

sessment: State of the art

. Retrieved January 4, 2004, from http://

www.electronicportfolios.com/portfolios/wcce2001.pdf

Barrett, H. C. (2001b). Electronic portfolios = Multimedia development + portfo-

lio development: The electronic portfolio development process. In B. L. Cam-

bridge (Ed.),

Electronic portfolios: Emerging practices for students, faculty,

and institutions

(pp. 110-111).

American Association for Higher Education.

Retrieved January 4, 2004, from http://www.electronicportfolios.com/portfo-

lios/EPDevProcess.html

Barton, J., & Collins, A., Eds. (1997).

Portfolio assessment: A handbook for edu-

cators

. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Wesley.

Breault, R. A. (2000, April).

Metacognition in portfolio development

. Paper pre-

sented in session titled “Reflective Writing and Portfolios: What is the Quality

of Preservice Teachers’ Thinking?” at the meeting of the American Educa-

tional Research Association, New Orleans, LA.

Burke, K., Fogarty, R., & Belgrad, S. (1994).

The mindful school: The portfolio

connection.

Arlington Heights, IL: Skylight Training & Publishing.

Campbell, D. M., Melenyzer, B. J., Nettles, D. H., & Wyman, R. M. (2000).

Port-

folio and performance assessment in teacher education

. Boston: Allyn & Ba-

con.

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Campbell, D. M., Cignetti, P. M., Melenyzer, B. J., Nettles, D. H., & Wyman, R.

M. (2001).

How to develop a professional portfolio: A manual for teachers

(2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Danielson, C., & Abrutyn, L. (1997).

An introduction to using portfolios in the

classroom

. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum De-

velopment (ASCD).

Fenton, R. (1996). Performance assessment system development.

Alaska Educa-

tional Research Journal

(1): 13-22.

Ivers, K., & Barron, A. E. (1998).

Multimedia projects in education

. Englewood,

CO: Libraries Unlimited.

Kankaanrana, M., Barrett, H. C., & Hartnell-Young, E. (2001). Exploring the use

of electronic portfolios in international contexts.

Proceedings of World Con-

ference on Educational Media,

Hypermedia, and Telecommunications (Ed-

Media) 2001

(1): 874-876. Retrieved January 4, 2004, http://dl.aace.org/8614

Kilbane, C. R., & Milman, N. B. (2003).

What every teacher should know about

creating digital teaching portfolios

. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project (1996).

Standards for

foreign language learning: Preparing for the 21st century

. Yonkers, NY:

ACTFL.

Nellen, T. (1999). Using the web for high school student-writers. In S. Gruber

(Ed.),

Weaving a virtual web: Practical approaches to new information tech-

nologies

(pp. 219-225). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Retrieved January 4, 2004, from http://www.tnellen.com/ted/weave.html

Oller, J. (1991). Foreign language testing: Its breadth.

ADFL Bulletin

(3): 33-38.

Paulson, F. L., Paulson, P. R., & Meyer, C. A. (1991). What makes a portfolio a

portfolio?

Educational Leadership

(5): 60-63.

Sheingold, K. (1992, June).

Technology and assessment

. Paper presented at the

Technology & School Reform Conference, Dallas, TX.

Stiggins, R. J. (1994).

Student-centered classroom assessment

. New York: Merrill.

Terry, R. M. (1998). Authentic tasks and materials for testing in the foreign lan-

guage classroom. In J. Harper, M. G. Lively, & M. K. Williams (Eds.),

The

coming of age of the profession: Issues and emerging ideas for the teaching of

foreign languages

(pp. 277-290). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Assessing Readiness of Foreign LanguageAssessing Readiness of Foreign Language

Assessing Readiness of Foreign Language

Education Majors to Education Majors to

Education Majors to

ake the Praxis IIake the Praxis II

ake the Praxis II

ExamExam

Exam

Carol Carol

Carol

ilkersonilkerson

ilkerson

Carson-Newman College

Judith H. SchomberJudith H. Schomber

Judith H. Schomber

Georgia Southern University

Jana SandargJana Sandarg

Jana Sandarg

Augusta State University

AbstractAbstract

Abstract

Ten of the 13 states in the Southern Conference on Language Teach-

ing (SCOLT) region require the Praxis II Exam for teacher licensure in

French, German, or Spanish. Perceptions of high failure rates on this

exam call into question the quality of teacher education programs. Test

takers and reviewers find required tasks and performance levels on the

Praxis II unaligned with the expectations for beginning teachers estab-

lished by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages

(ACTFL). After describing the sections of the exam and their limitations,

this article offers strategies to prepare students for the tasks required and

ways to assess student readiness to take the exam.

BackgroundBackground

Background

Most states within the SCOLT region have adopted the Praxis II Exams as

licensure instruments for prospective teachers of French, German, and Spanish.

For state departments of education, the Praxis II Series has become an attractive

and practical alternative to state-generated licensure exams because Educational

Testing Service (ETS), a professional test development company based in Princeton,

New Jersey, assumes responsibility for test development and administration, along

with liability for legal issues. An additional benefit to states and teachers is licen-

sure reciprocity among states requiring the Praxis II Exams. Unfortunately, how-

ever, the media report that prospective foreign language teachers, especially in the

field of Spanish, fail the exam in alarming numbers and must often repeat the exam

multiple times (Cumming, 1998). Test takers and teacher educators respond that

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

the expectations of the component tests surpass reasonable levels of professional

knowledge and skill for beginning teachers.

The Higher Education Amendments of 1998 require institutions to publish a

“report card” that includes pass rates on teacher certification tests and a compari-

son of the institutional pass rate with state averages (National Research Council,

2000). This report can be particularly damaging to foreign language education

programs because they tend to have smaller numbers of majors and because failure

rates often include the scores of test takers who are not students or graduates of an

institution (Educational Testing Service, 1998). Reports may be further skewed if

institutions have low numbers of test takers. The

ETS Background Report

(1998)

shows that 90% of the reporting institutions had 10 or fewer students taking a

particular Praxis II Test. With numbers this low, a single failure has the potential to

endanger a teacher education program. Furthermore, failure rates are high because

students often take the licensure test as practice, even though they know that they

are not prepared. Sudzina (2001) states that Praxis II Tests are usually taken be-

tween the junior and senior years of college, too early to assess whether students

know the specialty content.

This article begins with a comparison of state policies regarding the Praxis II

in the SCOLT region. It continues with an overview of two of the component tests

of the Praxis II and an assessment of their limitations. The discussion concludes

with strategies to prepare test takers for the Praxis II and ways to assess candidate

readiness to take the licensure exam.

Comparing SComparing S

Comparing S

tate Options and Policiestate Options and Policies

tate Options and Policies

State officials choose the component tests in the Praxis Series for use as licen-

sure instruments in their respective states, and they also establish the passing scores.

Teachers and university faculty may be asked for input, but they do not set policy

(Nweke & Hall, 1999). During the adoption process in Georgia, for example, the

Professional Standards Commission (PSC) invited panels of teachers and teacher

educators to critique two Praxis tests and to suggest passing scores. However, the

PSC ultimately selected the component tests currently in use and established the

initial (“phase-in”) passing scores for the various Praxis II Exams.

The summative data displayed in Table 1 reveal five permutations of the Praxis

Exam currently in use in the SCOLT region: (1) the German language tes, (2) the

Content Knowledge Test only, (3) the Productive Language Skills Test only, (4) a

combination of the Content Knowledge Test and Productive Language Skills Tests,

and (5) a combination of the Content Knowledge Test and three tests of Principles

of Learning and Teaching for grades K-12. Therefore, comparisons of Praxis scores

and requirements by states cannot be made without an

a priori

explanation of terms

and specification of which tests are in use. Table 1 compares the various state

options in the SCOLT region.

Assessing Readiness of FL Ed Majors for the Praxis II Exam 31

able 1able 1

able 1

Comparison of Component Comparison of Component

Comparison of Component

ests and Passing Scoresests and Passing Scores

ests and Passing Scores

by Sby S

by S

tates in SCOLtates in SCOL

tates in SCOL

Region Region

Region

tatetate

tate

French French

French

ests andests and

ests and

German German

German

ests andests and

ests and

Spanish Spanish

Spanish

ests andests and

ests and

Passing ScoresPassing Scores

Passing Scores

Passing ScoresPassing Scores

Passing Scores

Passing ScoresPassing Scores

Passing Scores

Arkansas Content Knowledge 158 Content Knowledge 155

Productive Skills 167 Productive Skills 141

Georgia Content Knowledge 156 Content Knowledge 156 Content Knowledge 167

Productive Skills 169 Productive Skills 182 Productive Skills 159

Kentucky Content Knowledge 159 Content Knowledge 157 Content Knowledge 160

Principles of Learning Principles of Learning Principles of Learning

& Teaching (PLT) & Teaching (PLT) & Teaching (PLT)

PLT Grades K-6 161 PLT Grades K-6 161 PLT Grades K-6 161

PLT Grades 5-9 161 PLT Grades 5-9 161 PLT Grades 5-9 161

PLT Grades 7-12 161 PLT Grades 7-12 161 PLT Grades 7-12 161

Louisiana Content Knowledge 156 German Test 500 Content Knowledge 160

Mississippi Productive Skills 161 Productive Skills 160 Productive Skills 155

North Content Knowledge and Content Knowledge 153 Content Knowledge and

Carolina Productive Skills com- Productive Skills com-

bined score of 335, no bined score of 327, no

minimum on either test minimum on either test

South Content Knowledge 156 Content Knowledge 151 Content Knowledge 148

Carolina Productive Skills 166 Productive Skills 181 Productive Skills 161

Tennessee Content Knowledge 160 Content Knowledge 139 Content Knowledge 152

Productive Skills 165 Productive Skills 154

Virginia Content Knowledge 169 Content Knowledge 162 Content Knowledge 161

West Content Knowledge 131 Content Knowledge 132 Content Knowledge 143

Virginia

Information retrieved and compiled from <www.ets.org/praxis/prxstate.html>

November 1, 2003 (Educational Testing Service, 2003b).

Although states show near consensus in their required passing score for the

French Productive Language Skills Test (number 0171), with only eight points

separating the highest and lowest minimum passing scores, minimum passing scores

for the French Content Knowledge Test (number 0173) differ by 38 points. The

states that require the Productive Language Skills Test in German (number 0182)

differ by 22 points in their minimum passing scores, and scores for the German

Content Knowledge (number 0181) test vary by 30 points. The minimum passing

scores for the Productive Language Skills Test in Spanish (number 0192) vary by

20 points and the difference grows to 24 points for scores on the Spanish Content

Knowledge Test (number 0191). The combined minimum passing scores for the

French and Spanish Praxis tests in North Carolina exceed those of every state in

the region requiring the same tests. These multiple state options regarding test choice

and the range of state policies regarding passing scores on the Praxis make com-

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

paring data difficult. Moreover, teachers seeking licensure in the same language in

the same region of the country are, in reality, held to different expectations depend-

ing upon the policy adopted by the state in which they seek licensure. The National

Research Council (2000) reached this same conclusion in its comparison of state

licensure exams. These differences beg questions of fairness and realistic expecta-

tions for beginning K-12 language teachers.

It should be noted that states were encouraged to adopt the Praxis II Exams to

facilitate certification reciprocity by using a common licensure instrument. How-

ever, the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certifi-

cation (NASDTEC) Interstate Contract agreements essentially guarantee transfer-

ability of teaching certificates with little regard for Praxis scores, as illustrated in

Table 2. Table 2 also shows that the 10 states in the SCOLT region requiring the

Praxis II Exams have reciprocity agreements with Alabama, Florida, and Texas–

the three states that do not require the Praxis II.

able 2able 2

able 2

Licensure Reciprocity in the SCOLLicensure Reciprocity in the SCOL

Licensure Reciprocity in the SCOL

Region Region

Region

tatetate

tate

NASDTEC InterstateNASDTEC Interstate

NASDTEC Interstate

Additional Requirements Beyond Additional Requirements Beyond

Additional Requirements Beyond

alidalid

alid

ContractContract

Contract

Certificate from Other SCertificate from Other S

Certificate from Other S

tatetate

tate

Alabama With all SCOLT states 3 years’ experience in last 7 years

Arkansas With all SCOLT states

Florida With all SCOLT states

Georgia With all SCOLT states

Kentucky With all SCOLT states 2 years’ experience in field

except MS & LA

Louisiana With all SCOLT states Must meet LA’s Praxis II scores

except KY

Mississippi With all SCOLT states 2 years’ experience in field

except KY

North Carolina With all SCOLT states Must meet NC’s Praxis II scores

South Carolina With all SCOLT states 27 months of teaching experience in field

Tennessee With all SCOLT states Exemption from Praxis II reviewed case-by-case

Texas With all SCOLT states Test scores from Praxis II reviewed case-by-case

Virginia With all SCOLT states

West Virginia With all SCOLT states Exemption from Praxis II reviewed case-by-case

Information retrieved and compiled November 1, 2003, from the Web site of the

National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification:

<www.nasdtec.org>.

Assessing Readiness of FL Ed Majors for the Praxis II Exam 33

The Content Knowledge and Productive Language Skills The Content Knowledge and Productive Language Skills

The Content Knowledge and Productive Language Skills

estsests

ests

Within the SCOLT region the most frequently used component tests in the

Praxis Series are the Content Knowledge Test (number 0173 in French, 0181 in

German, and 0191 in Spanish) and the Productive Language Skills Test (number

0171 in French, 0182 in German, and 0192 in Spanish). Louisiana is the only state

to use German test number 0180. As of September 1, 2003, Kentucky requires

teachers to pass three Principles of Learning and Teaching Tests (PLT) for grades

K-6, grades 5-9, and grades 7-12, in addition to the Content Knowledge Test for

each language.

The

Tests at a Glance

(

TAAG

) booklet (Educational Testing Service, 2003b)

states that the Content Knowledge Test in each language (French, German, and

Spanish) assesses the knowledge and competencies necessary for a beginning or

entry-year teacher of the target language. Each 2-hour test of 120 multiple-choice

questions includes tape-recorded listening passages and printed material, with ques-

tions on various language skills and cultural knowledge. The first section tests

interpretative listening, requiring test takers to answer within a 30-minute period

32 questions based upon an unspecified number of aural recordings of native speak-

ers talking at a normal rate of conversation. Questions assess “phonemic discrimi-

nation, understanding of idiomatic expressions, familiarity with vocabulary and

typical conversational structures, and comprehension of important facts or ideas

contained in the spoken material.”

The second section of the Content Knowledge Test lasts 35 minutes and con-

tains 34 questions that assess knowledge of the structure of the target language.

Test takers analyze spoken (recorded) and written errors in the respective target

language. Depending upon the language tested, questions focus on “grammar, me-

chanics, morphology, phonology, syntax, word analysis, unacceptable Anglicisms,

use of slang, vocabulary, and word choice.”

In the third section, interpretative reading, test takers have 35 minutes to an-

swer 31 questions based upon an unspecified number of reading selections. The

TAAG

describes the passages as encompassing a variety of topics at various levels

of difficulty, from print and nonprint sources, such as periodicals, the Internet,

advertisements, and literature.

The fourth section tests knowledge of cultural perspectives. Test takers have

20 minutes to answer 23 questions about “geography, history, lifestyles and societ-

ies, literature and fine arts, and sociolinguistic elements” of French, German, or

Spanish. On the French test, questions are written in English and French; on the

German and Spanish tests, questions are asked in the target language.

The

TAAG

describes the Productive Language Skills test as a one-hour test

with two sections–speaking, worth 60% of the final score, and writing, worth 40%.

There are six spoken questions to be answered in the 25 minutes allotted. The skills

tested in the speaking section include “role-playing, picture description, giving

instructions or picture narration, stating and defending an opinion, oral paraphrase

of a listening passage, and making a brief talk.” The

TAAG

offers test takers one

sample question for this portion of the test. In the writing section, test takers have

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

35 minutes “to write a short composition based on a series of pictures, to write a

short formal letter, and to write four questions to elicit short and long answers.”

However, the

TAAG

offers no sample questions for this section.

Limitations of the Praxis II ExamLimitations of the Praxis II Exam

Limitations of the Praxis II Exam

A closer look at the Content Knowledge and Productive Skills Tests reveals

problems with test questions and instructions. During workshops and professional

conferences (Bernardy, Leger, Sandarg, & Wilkerson, 2003; Sandarg, Schomber,

& Wilkerson, 1999a; 1999b; Sandarg & Wilkerson, 2002; Sandarg, Wilkerson, &

Riley, 2002), test takers and educators reported that the tasks on the Content Knowl-

edge Test differ significantly from activities in contemporary foreign language class-

rooms. Test takers state that dialogues and narrations are read only once and are

frequently followed by multiple questions. Instructions in the listening section do

not indicate whether test takers should listen for global meaning or discrete items

of information; therefore, test takers try to retain all the information, thereby taxing

their normal memory load. Whereas typical classroom listening tasks occur in a

context that provides a degree of predictability or a frame of reference for the

listener, directions to test takers in the

TAAG

state only that they will hear short

conversations or narrations. In the Structure of the Language section of the Content

Knowledge Test, students are asked to find student errors in aural and written sen-

tences, a task inconsistent with current teaching practices, which encourage stu-

dents to speak, errors and all, as they develop proficiency.

Although the reading portion of the Content Knowledge Test purports to evalu-

ate students’ abilities to generalize, deduce, or infer, the types and lengths of read-

ing passages lead students to believe that they have been tested on literary knowl-

edge rather than on reading skills. Test takers advise other students to memorize

facts about authors, genres, and literary works prior to taking the Praxis II. Further-

more, specialized vocabulary and low-frequency idioms limit students’ ability to

make inferences or educated guesses. And junior-level students who take the Praxis

II are often just developing the skills to understand abstract ideas as they read in

the foreign language.

The

TAAG

description of the Cultural Perspectives portion of the Content

Knowledge Test covers a wide range of topics, including history, geography, litera-

ture and the arts, life-styles, and sociolinguistic elements in French-, German-, and

Spanish-speaking countries and regions. Preparing for this portion of the test is,

therefore, a formidable task. It is particularly daunting for Spanish students, since

Spanish is spoken in 20 countries, as well as in the United States. No typical for-

eign language major can be expected to assimilate the breadth of knowledge re-

quired to prepare for the culture test, and the ensuing process is tantamount to a

game of Trivial Pursuit™, a concern also noted by Mitchell and Barth (1999) in

Praxis Tests of other disciplines.

The tasks required of students in the speaking and writing sections of the Pro-

ductive Skills Test are aligned with those practiced in today’s classroom. Students

are familiar with picture description, role-playing, giving instructions, picture nar-

Assessing Readiness of FL Ed Majors for the Praxis II Exam 35

rations, and writing compositions and letters. However, the proficiency require-

ments of many of the tasks surpass what is reasonably expected of entry-level teach-

ers, according to ACTFL recommendations. For example, students are asked to

defend an opinion, a task at the Superior Level of the ACTFL proficiency scale.

The recommended proficiency level for a beginning teacher is Advanced Low, a

level at which test takers should be able “to narrate and describe in all major time

frames in paragraph-length discourse” (Breiner-Sanders, Lowe, Miles, & Swender,

2000). Undergraduates typically take the Praxis II at the end of their junior year or

in the beginning of their senior year, prior to student teaching. With only 2 or 3

years of college experience in the language, few students will have achieved Ad-

vanced-Low proficiency, much less the Superior Level.

Obstacles to test takers are not confined to the test instrument itself; poor test-

ing conditions hamper even the best students. Test takers have told the authors of

problems ranging from unbearable room temperatures and no bathroom breaks to

faulty equipment and conflicting directions from test monitors. Proctors have ar-

rived up to an hour late, and at other times they have given procedural instructions

contradicting those in the test booklet. When tests had to be rescheduled by ETS,

students learned of their retest dates only 48 hours in advance, causing them to

scramble to change schedules and secure release time from work or school. Per-

haps most stressful and distracting is the practice of placing students side by side to

record on cassette tape recorders in an open room with background noise of differ-

ent voices and languages. Such testing conditions annoy students and heighten

frustration and stress. These sorts of problems must be eliminated if students are to

be successful.

In 2002 the Educational Testing Service (ETS) began revising the Content

Knowledge and Productive Skills Tests with input from foreign language educa-

tors and classroom teachers. A comparison of the former and current descriptions

of the tests in the on-line

TAAG

reveals three changes. The current Content Knowl-

edge Test contains 20 fewer questions; the listening and reading passages focus on

interpretative

listening and

interpretive

reading; and ETS defines sympathetic and

unsympathetic readers and listeners in the scoring guide for the Productive Skills

Tests.

Preparing for the PraxisPreparing for the Praxis

Preparing for the Praxis

Educational Testing Service sells 17 different study guides and kits and 18

distinct diagnostic preparation programs, described as covering material on the

test, with suggested test-taking strategies, actual full-length tests, a scoring key, an

explanation of answers, and an explanation of scoring procedures. In the

TAAG

these are marketed as “A great way to study!” However, nothing is available for

French, German, or Spanish. This fact, coupled with the paucity of sample items in

the

Tests at a Glance,

leaves foreign language test takers very little with which to

practice for the Praxis II Exam. To help test takers prepare, many colleges of edu-

cation suggest that their faculty take the Praxis II to get an idea about the types of

questions students are likely to encounter (Sudzina, 2001). Another way that teacher

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

educators might gather information about the component Praxis II tests is by study-

ing the Praxis Series

Job Analysis

for the respective language to be tested (Reynolds,

1993; Tannenbaum, 1992; 1994).

These

Job Analyses

contain the original statements that guided the ETS teams

as they revised the former National Teacher Examination to become the Praxis

Series. The statements reveal the Praxis philosophy regarding what entry-level,

newly licensed (certified) teachers should know and be able to do. Setting aside

foreign language pedagogy, which is not included in the Content Knowledge and

Productive Language Skills Tests, educators will note the similarity of the content

areas to the traditional four skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, with

a separate cultural component. The final area, structure of the language, closely

resembles contrastive analysis, emphasizing error analysis of Anglo non-native

speakers of the target language. To this end, teacher educators can help language

education majors by familiarizing them with the tenets of error analysis and con-

trastive analysis and by providing sample texts from this long-gone era of the pro-

fession. Two such texts are

The Grammatical Structures of English and German: A

Contrastive Sketch

(Kufner, 1962) and

The Grammatical Structures of English

and Spanish

(Stockwell, Martin, & Bowen, 1965).

The wording of the original statements also cues teacher educators to the lin-

guistic and grammatical terms with which students must be familiar to be success-

ful on the exam. For example, statements in Appendix C of the Spanish

Job Analy-

sis

(Tannenbaum, 1992) inform test takers that they must demonstrate the correct

formation and use of regular and irregular verbs (including orthographic- and stem-

changing) in all indicative tenses, in the conditional, and the subjunctive mood, as

well as the passive voice and its reflexive or active-voice substitutes. Test takers

must understand morphemes, augmentative, diminutive, and pejorative suffixes.

They must also understand the formation of compound words and contractions,

and the function of cognates and false cognates in the development of vocabulary.

In addition, test takers must identify common pronunciation problems for nonna-

tive speakers of Spanish, such as the trill and tap [r]. Knowledge of the language

must be complemented with knowledge

about

the language as well as knowledge

about

how Anglophones learn

the target language.

Teacher educators can help prepare test takers by pointing out to them the

varying degrees of contextual cues in the reading passages for the three languages

in the

TAAG

. For example, the French example provides background information

that test takers use to interpret the passage. The text is followed by a single ques-

tion. The German example is an advertisement, likely found in a newspaper or

telephone book. German test takers use visual cues to answer a single question.

However, the Spanish example, by contrast, is comprised of three paragraphs of

written text without title, background information, or visual cues. Sentences aver-

age 20 words in length, and three sentences contain 28 or more words. Clearly, the

amount of background information, the length, and the level of difficulty of read-

ing passages vary.

To prepare language education majors for this range of texts, teacher educa-

tors might select reading passages of varying lengths and genres and remove nor-

Assessing Readiness of FL Ed Majors for the Praxis II Exam 37

mal contextual cues, such as titles, headings, and repetitions. Since contemporary

best practice instructs students to rely upon schema and background knowledge,

foreign language education majors may need overt instruction on how to make

inferences when reading unfamiliar texts with minimal or no background informa-

tion or normal discourse cues.

The final section of the Content Knowledge Test assesses beginning teachers’

knowledge of the target culture. In order to prepare language education majors for

the possible topics indicated in the

TAAG,

faculty should advise majors to complete

at least one course, if not more, in literature, in culture, and in history prior to

taking the Praxis II Exam. Language faculty can compile lists in their respective

specialty areas for students to study for this portion of the test. Topics should in-

clude famous artists, writers, performers, Nobel Prize winners, geographical fea-

tures of countries and regions where the target language is spoken, typical regional

foods, and significant dates and events in history. Test-takers should take comfort,

however, in knowing that even native speakers frequently say that they have not

known the answers to all the questions in the culture section of the test.

The

General Tips

on preparing for the Praxis Productive Language Skills Tests,

found in the supplemental

Advice on Taking the Productive Language Skills Tests

(Educational Testing Service, 2003a), may mislead test-takers by indicating that

they have to demonstrate a thorough knowledge of basic verb tenses on this exam.

No explanation is given for what is meant by the phrase

basic verb tenses

; there-

fore, teacher education faculty need to point out that expectations in the

Job Analy-

ses

indicate that students need a thorough knowledge of

all

verb tenses. Students

should be advised to complete advanced grammar course work before taking the

Praxis Exam.

As stated earlier, the

TAAG

for the Productive Language Skills Test includes

only one sample question for the speaking section and none for the writing section.

The on-line

Advice on Taking the Productive Language Skills Tests

gives some

ideas of ways to practice, such as opening a magazine to an interesting picture and

explaining within a 2-minute time limit in the target language what has just hap-

pened, what is happening now, and what will probably happen next. However, the

TAAG

states that test takers are evaluated on their comprehensibility to

educated

native speakers, their ability to communicate

without major errors

in grammar and

vocabulary, and their ability to

defend

an opinion (emphasis added). These abilities

are hallmarks of Superior proficiency, as defined by ACTFL, surpassing its recom-

mendation of Advanced-Low proficiency for beginning K-12 teachers. The scor-

ing guide for both the writing and speaking sections awards the highest rating (a

score of four) to responses that are

completely

and easily comprehensible, even to

unsympathetic

listener/reader (defined by ETS as a native speaker not accus-

tomed to dealing with nonnative learners), to responses that are

completely

and

entirely

accurate/relevant, and to responses that employ a

broad, precise

vocabu-

lary adequate for

almost all topics

(emphasis added). Again, these are hallmarks of

Superior proficiency. Perhaps the best strategy to prepare majors for this reality is

for faculty to talk openly about the expectations of proficiency early in students’

academic careers, even setting proficiency criteria for admission to teacher candi-

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

dacy. Other strategies might include requiring oral interviews with prospective

majors to assess proficiency, establishing expectations of written and oral profi-

ciency in courses required of language majors, and maintaining portfolios of stu-

dents’ course work to assess proficiency rather than relying upon end-of-course

grades when determining readiness to take the Praxis Exam. Candid discussion

about and periodic assessment of students’ proficiency should become the respon-

sibility of all faculty, not only those who teach the foreign language education

courses.

Best Practices for Beginning Best Practices for Beginning

Best Practices for Beginning

eacherseachers

eachers

It is essential for test takers to adequately prepare for the Praxis II by using the

TAAG

and the suggestions listed above. However, long before it is their time to

take the Praxis II, foreign language education majors can be positioned for success

by achieving the desired level of language proficiency. Since the proficiency level

for success on the Praxis II is above Advanced Low, educators must take steps to

ensure that foreign language majors reach high levels of proficiency before they

take the test.

All foreign language majors should be encouraged to participate in a study-

abroad program in which they will have structured classes to continue their formal

study of the language and in which they will have enriched out-of-class experi-

ences to enhance their language skills and their cultural competence. The study-

abroad experience, as Riedel (1989), Milleret (1990), and Talburt and Stewart (1999)

have pointed out, is still far too loosely structured and not well enough assessed to

assure that the participant is moving toward Advanced Low proficiency by engag-

ing in frequent informal conversations with native speakers and narrating and de-

scribing in present, past, and future tenses.

Pre-service teachers also can benefit from maintaining a portfolio of their lan-

guage development as they prepare for the Praxis II. In the same way that students

can build a reflective portfolio of classroom teaching and observations of students

and situations, as Antonek, McCormick, and Donato (1997) suggest, students with

the assistance of foreign language educators can compile a list of language tasks at

the Advanced and Superior Levels and record the completion of such tasks, their

frequency, and any comments on their performance. Tasks can be accomplished

through normal classroom work, service-learning projects, or other means through

which students interact with native speakers.

Foreign language professionals can facilitate the process of moving their stu-

dents toward the Advanced and Superior Levels by supporting initiatives to begin

foreign languages in elementary school as Oxford (1998) suggests. If beginning

teachers are to attain high levels of proficiency, they must begin language study in

elementary school to gain the necessary 720 hours at middle, high, and college

levels (Malone, Rifkin, Christian, & Johnson, 2003). At the same time, progression

in formal language programs must be well articulated to prevent students from

repeating at the next higher level what they have already learned at a lower level, a

circumstance that occurs frequently in U.S. colleges and universities. It is common

Assessing Readiness of FL Ed Majors for the Praxis II Exam 39

to find students with considerable backgrounds in foreign language study from

elementary, middle, and high school enrolled in elementary foreign language courses

at the postsecondary level.

Many European countries design a national curriculum with a clear progres-

sion of learning to higher levels of proficiency in foreign languages. With the pub-

lication of the

Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century

(ACTFL, 1999), educators in all states have a guide for both curriculum and articu-

lation. Many states, such as Georgia, have aligned their state curriculum for foreign

languages to the National Standards, including assessments of learning. Sandrock

(1996) suggests that articulation is best achieved through a focus on the progres-

sion of student learning, rather than by grade levels or the implementation of cur-

riculum guides based on strict sequences.

Finally, the standard undergraduate language curriculum must be reexamined

to determine if higher-level proficiency elements are incorporated into classroom

goals and activities. In upper-division courses in literature and civilization, for

example, there must be a deliberate attempt to “push” students toward high levels

of proficiency with speaking and writing activities designed to generate student

performance at that level, rather than heavy reliance on lectures, listening, and

note-taking. The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE),

in approving the

Program Standards for Foreign Language Teacher Education

(ACTFL, 2002), specifies content areas that are almost universally addressed in

upper-division foreign language courses. Greater efforts must therefore be made to

develop a collaborative relationship between departments of foreign languages and

teacher education units within colleges and universities.

Assessing ReadinessAssessing Readiness

Assessing Readiness

As foreign language educators, we must do all we can to ensure that our stu-

dents are ready to take the Praxis II Exam. We must teach and evaluate our students

with communicative methods, encourage them to study abroad, and incorporate

service-learning and community connections into our program curriculum. And

although it is exceedingly difficult for students to develop proficiency at the Ad-

vanced or Superior Levels of the ACTFL scale after 2 to 3 years of college study,

we must help them reach these levels. We must prepare students for the Praxis II

Exam by reviewing, and perhaps overtly teaching, test-taking skills. Some educa-

tors suggest that we teach to the test. The strategies outlined in this article do not

solve all the problems associated with the Praxis II in its current form, but they

form a tool that foreign language educators can use to assess student readiness to

take the Exam.

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

ReferencesReferences

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gram standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers (Initial level—

undergraduate and graduate: For K-12 and secondary certification programs)

Yonkers, NY: ACTFL. Retrieved January 7, 2004, from http://www.actfl.org/

public/articles/ncate2002.pdf

Antonek, J., McCormick, D., & Donato, R. (1997). The student teacher portfolio

as autobiography: Developing a professional identity.

The Modern Language

Journal

, 15-27.

Bernardy, A., Leger, T., Sandarg, J., & Wilkerson, C. (2003, February).

Success on

the Praxis II Exam in French, German, and Spanish.

Paper and workshop

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Teaching, Atlanta, GA.

Breiner-Sanders, K., Lowe, P., Miles, J., & Swender, E. (2000). ACTFL profi-

ciency guidelines–Speaking.

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Cumming, Doug. (1998, December 20). One-fifth fail test to be teacher.

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lanta Journal-Constitution,

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Educational Testing Service. (2003a).

Advice on taking the productive language

skills test: Supplement to the languages tests at a glance.

Princeton, NJ. Re-

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Educational Testing Service. (2003b).

Tests at a glance: Languages

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NJ. Retrieved January 7, 2004, from http://www.ets.org/praxis/prxstate.html

Educational Testing Service. (1998). The use of Praxis pass rates to evaluate teacher

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trastive sketch

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Malone, M., Rifkin, B., Christian, D., & Johnson, D. (2003). Attaining high levels

of proficiency: Challenges for foreign language education in the United States.

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view essay.

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, 483-488.

Mitchell, R., & Barth, P. (1999).

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licensing examinations. How teacher licensing tests fall short

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DC: Educational Trust. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 457

261)

National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification

(NASDTEC). Web site: www.nasdtec.org

National Research Council. (2000).

Tests and teaching quality: Interim report

Committee on Assessment and Teaching Quality, Board on Testing and As-

sessment. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project. (1999).

Standards for

foreign language learning in the 21st century.

Yonkers, NY: Author.

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Nweke, W., & Hall, T. (1999).

Evaluating cut-scores on two certification tests:

How well do decisions based on cut-scores match teacher- and principal-

reported ratings of competence in the classroom?

Paper presented at the an-

nual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal,

Quebec, Canada. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 457 261)

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education?

ERIC/CLL News Bulletin

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ate programs in Spain.

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Sandarg, J., Schomber, J., & Wilkerson, C. (1999a, August).

Teacher certification

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Paper presented at the annual meeting of The Ameri-

can Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Denver, CO.

Sandarg, J., Schomber, J., & Wilkerson, C. (1999b, November).

Preparing for

Praxis II

. Paper presented at the annual meeting of The American Council on

the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Dallas, TX.

Sandarg, J., & Wilkerson, C. (2002, September ).

Strategies for success on the

Praxis II Exam in Spanish.

Paper and workshop presented at the meeting of

The Tennessee Foreign Language Teachers Association, Jackson, TN.

Sandarg, J., Wilkerson, C., & Riley, A. (2002, February).

Strategies for success on

the Praxis II Exam in Spanish

. Paper and workshop presented at the meeting

of The Foreign Language Association of Georgia, Athens, GA.

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. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the

American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA. (ERIC Document

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Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

blank page 42

remove header

The The

The

TPR TPR

TPR

est: est:

est:

otal Physical Responseotal Physical Response

otal Physical Response

as an as an

as an

Assessment Assessment

Assessment

oolool

ool

Scott Scott

Scott

. Grubbs. Grubbs

. Grubbs

Valdosta State University

AbstractAbstract

Abstract

The exigencies of producing students who are able to meet the demands

of the global society have given second language study a new sense of

purpose and importance among educators and policy-makers. Proficiency

assessment, however, still relies heavily upon traditional discrete-item

testing that focuses on grammatical structures and is often devoid of

meaningful context. Total Physical Response (TPR), long a mainstay of

foreign language instruction, has been frequently overlooked as a viable

means for assessing proficiency. TPR is not only a valid means for gaug-

ing foreign language proficiency at increasingly complex levels, but it is

capable of reinforcing core foreign language skills in a manner that ap-

peals to students with various learning styles.

IntroductionIntroduction

Introduction

In his 1966 article “The Learning Strategy of the Total Physical Response,”

James J. Asher, the psychologist credited with the development of the Total Physi-

cal Response (TPR) method of foreign language instruction, stated, “Perhaps one

of the most complex tasks in human learning is the problem of how to achieve

fluency in a foreign language” (p. 79). While this statement may strike foreign

language practitioners as so self-evident as to beg discussion, the depth of the com-

plexity of which Asher speaks is reflected in the frustrations and challenges that

both teachers and students face while pursuing second language acquisition and

proficiency. As Asher notes in a 2001(a) address to European educators:

The evidence: 96% of students who voluntarily enroll in foreign language

classes “give up” after three years. Only 4% continue to achieve at least

minimal levels of fluency. More damaging: Not only do our students “give

up” but they are now convinced that they “cannot learn another language.”

After all, they tried but the results were high-voltage stress and the hu-

miliating experience of failure. (p. 1)

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

Although Asher was referring in this case to oral proficiency, it would not be

out of the realm of logic to posit that the lack of foreign language proficiency also

extended to aural, reading, and written skills as well. This lack of achievement and

the high attrition rate among foreign language students become an even greater

matter for concern as America moves into a new century in which increased eco-

nomic, political, and cultural interdependence among nations has made foreign

language acquisition an increasingly important and necessary part of American

school curricula. The move to increase the curricular importance of foreign lan-

guage instruction found favor not only among educators, but among policy-makers

at state and national levels, as illustrated by the recommendations found in the

education reform programs

A Nation at Risk

(National Commission on Excellence

in Education, 1983) and

Goals 2000

. Indeed, as Nugent (2000) noted in her article,

“Language Instruction in a Global Community”:

To be competitive in today’s global economy, the business community

has recognized the vital need for today’s students and tomorrow’s work

force to be competent in languages other than English. Effective employ-

ees must be able to interact appropriately in face-to-face situations with

those whose native language is not English. They must be able to interpret

the concepts, ideas, and opinions expressed by members of non-English

speaking societies through their art, literature, and media. (p. 38)

Moreover, during the 1990s, some states began to place increased emphasis

on the importance of foreign language study, as illustrated by the observation in the

overview to the

Massachusetts Foreign Language Curriculum Framework

(Mas-

sachusetts Department of Education, 1999) that “language is the medium in which

human beings think and by which they express what they have thought. The study

of language–any language–is therefore the study of everything that pertains to hu-

man nature, as humans understand it” (p. 1). Thus, in states such as Massachusetts,

foreign language study has moved over the course of the last decade from an elec-

tive position in the school curriculum towards achieving a more prominent curricular

status.

The Challenge of Foreign Language The Challenge of Foreign Language

The Challenge of Foreign Language

AssessmentAssessment

Assessment

At the same time that foreign language instruction was gaining increased rec-

ognition and acceptance as a central aspect of curriculum, American education

witnessed an increased impetus towards accountability and assessment. This push

for measuring student achievement through testing has most recently found expres-

sion in the mandates found in the

No Child Left Behind Act

of 2001

and the education

reform legislation enacted on state and local levels. While the majority of these

efforts focus on language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies, there are

efforts to hold foreign language teachers and students accountable for achievement

in languages other than English. Currently, the National Center for Education Sta-

tistics (NCES) is preparing to field study the first Foreign Language National

Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for initial administration in the fall of

Total Physical Response as an Assessment Tool 45

2004. The test, which will initially be offered in Spanish, will measure student

performance in the areas of speaking, listening, reading, and writing (NCES, 2003).

Additionally, foreign language achievement is assessed either directly in the form

of state-mandated testing, such as the Regents’ Spanish Test in New York (Zehr,

2003), or indirectly as a contributing indicator to overall school performance. In

Georgia, for example, student achievement data on the foreign language advanced

placement tests are included with scores from other advanced placement tests as

part of the criteria to determine how well a school is meeting its educational objec-

tives (Georgia Department of Education, 2003).

Despite the ever-increasing importance of foreign language assessment, seri-

ous concerns remain regarding the methods by which assessing achievement in

second language acquisition is to be conducted. Educators recognize the impor-

tance that assessment plays in foreign language instruction and urge diversification

in testing to include performance-based assessment, authentic materials, and evalu-

ative techniques that encourage communicative approaches to measuring proficiency

in the target language as opposed to an overriding emphasis on the memorization

of grammatical structures (Massachusetts Department of Education, 1999). There

is, nevertheless, still a great deal of reliance on the more traditional methods of

foreign language assessment. These conventional strategies include criterion-based,

teacher-made, discrete-point grammar assessments, vocabulary tests, and produc-

tion-driven approaches to gauge oral proficiency (Asher, 2001b; Hall, 2001). As

Hall notes, these types of traditional assessment are so prevalent because the pri-

mary foci in foreign language instruction are centered upon mastery of grammatical

structures and vocabulary (p. 155). While these traditional assessment formats can

play a valuable role in determining second language acquisition, overreliance on

these methods can serve to undermine language proficiency and contradict the stan-

dards of foreign language learning as established by the profession in the mid-to-late

1990s, particularly those standards that address the ability to connect foreign lan-

guage learning to other cultures, communities, and academic disciplines (National

Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 1999). Moreover, tests based

on discrete-point grammatical items may serve to compromise language learning

and usage in context by presenting the material to be tested in such a way as to

become little more than a series of disconnected “non-sequiturs” (Omaggio, 1986).

Even in the instances when there is no disconnect between context and assess-

ment, traditional methods of testing tend to favor those students who are most

comfortable learning in the audio/visual modalities at the expense of those who

learn primarily in other ways. As Howard Gardner, developer of the Multiple Intel-

ligences Theory, observed in

Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences

(1983):

Yet it should be equally clear that current methods of assessing the intel-

lect are not sufficiently well honed to allow assessment of an individual’s

potentials or achievements in navigating the stars, mastering a foreign

tongue, or composing with a computer. The problem lies less in the tech-

nology of testing than in the ways in which we customarily think about the

intellect and our ingrained views of intelligence. (p. 4)

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

Gardner (1983) formulated his theory of Multiple Intelligences to “challenge

the classical view of intelligence that most of us have absorbed explicitly” (p. 5).

He postulated that, rather than a singular conceptualization of intelligence, humans

possess talents that can be classified as “intelligences” as long as these traits (1)

have a developmental feature, (2) can be observed in special populations, (3) pro-

vide evidence of localization in the brain, and (4) can support a symbolic or notational

system (Campbell, Campbell, & Dickinson, 1999). To this end, Gardner described,

but did not limit himself to, eight intelligences: linguistic, logical-mathematical,

spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.

These intelligences can be divided into sub-intelligences and are significantly in-

fluenced by the culture in which one lives and develops. While one may express

aspects of more than one intelligence, Gardner maintains that one’s creativity lies

mainly within one domain of intelligence. Each of these intelligences has its re-

spective developmental sequences and distinctive defining traits (Campbell,

Campbell, & Dickinson, 1999). In the academic environment, students tend to learn

more effectively when teachers ascertain the intelligences present in the classroom

and pattern their lessons accordingly to meet the learning styles of their students.

Just as the theory of Multiple Intelligences has practical applications for class-

room instruction, so does it possess the potential to provide more effective

assessment of student performance. In particular, the theory encourages the use of

authentic assessments so that students are able to express what they have learned in

a meaningful context, an especially important aspect of second language profi-

ciency assessment. Authentic, contextual assessments allow students to be evaluated

through criterion-referencing, benchmarking, or ipsative means (Armstrong, 1994).

Thus, foreign language teachers who incorporate the Multiple Intelligences con-

cept into assessments that favor authentic, contextual assessments over traditional

discrete-point, grammar-based tests may find that students previously at a disad-

vantage because of the audio/visual nature of traditional testing will demonstrate

an increased level of content mastery. If, however, foreign language educators con-

tinue to rely on conventional assessment methods, those students who do not excel

in the traditional testing formats will continue to experience a sense of heightened

anxiety that may impede learning in the target language and reinforce negative

student perceptions regarding foreign language acquisition (Asher, 2001b;

Onwuegbuzie, Bailey, & Daley, 1999).

otal Physical Responseotal Physical Response

otal Physical Response

Although Asher is credited with the development of the Total Physical Re-

sponse approach to foreign language acquisition, the method had its genesis in the

work of Harold E. Palmer, an English advisor attached to the Japanese Ministry of

Education, and his daughter, Dorothee, during the 1920s and 1930s. In

English

through Action

(1925), Palmer and his daughter advanced the idea that second

language acquisition was more effective in children when they carried out com-

mands issued by the teacher in the target language. Palmer’s work, however, received

little notice outside Japan and subsequently fell into obscurity in the sociopolitical

environment after World War II (Seely & Romijn, 2001)

Total Physical Response as an Assessment Tool 47

The approach that practitioners have come to recognize as Total Physical Re-

sponse began in the 1960s as an effort on the part of Asher, unaware of Palmer’s

work, to address the challenges facing foreign language pedagogy (Seely & Romijn,

2001). As Asher (1969) observed, “After studying a foreign language for two years,

the average American not only has almost zero fluency, but negative learning may

have resulted if the individual now has a fearful attitude towards second language

learning” (p. 3). Asher reiterated the frustrations of conventional foreign language

instruction in an address to the Alberta Teachers of English Conference in 2001,

when he presented the all too familiar scenario of the teacher who “can ask stu-

dents to practice an exercise for an hour, [and] come into the next class meeting

and it is as if the exercise has been erased from the students’ memories” (p. 2). It

was Asher’s initial contention that the foreign language curriculum was far too

ambitious, given the amount of contact time allowed for instruction. Rather than

attempt to attain proficiency in speaking, listening, reading, and writing, he posited

that the first phase of foreign language instruction should focus on one skill, pref-

erably listening, since listening proficiency has a high transferability to the other

three language skills (Asher, 1969). Indeed, Asher’s experimentation seemed to

support Palmer’s contention that action as a response to a spoken command facili-

tated second language acquisition; in Asher’s specific case, this acquisition was

expressed in terms of aural proficiency (Asher, 1966, 1969). Hence, the pedagogi-

cal method Asher proposed became known as

Total Physical

Response

(TPR)

While subsequent refinements of TPR have included the advent of “TPR

Storytelling” and a shift from an emphasis on primarily right-brain processes (Cur-

tain & Pesola, 1994) to an increased focus on language learning activities utilizing

both the left and right hemispheres of the brain (Asher, 2001c), the core principles

of TPR have remained constant. As previously stated, the essential aspect of TPR

has been the association of movement and language, often through an imperative

delivery-active response format. Initially, the teacher models the command through

several repetitions, consistently using the target language to identify the desired

behavior. Once students respond to the command, the teacher then ceases to per-

form the target action, relying instead on the verbal expression of the imperative.

Students do not undertake oral production until they feel sufficiently confident to

make the effort, and stressors are kept to a minimum. Though initial instruction

through TPR consists of short, basic commands, the level of complexity will in-

crease in relation to the aural/oral proficiency of the students (Curtain & Pesola,

1994).

The reliance upon commands has led to three misconceptions regarding Total

Physical Response: (1) TPR can be used only in conjunction with commands; (2)

TPR has been effective only in the initial phases of foreign language instruction;

and (3) TPR has been effective only with children (Asher, 2001d). In response,

Asher (1996) noted that, while he placed much importance on command structures,

the emphasis was on understanding as conveyed by the body movement of the

students, allowing for the expansion of the Total Physical Response method to

incorporate other grammatical and linguistic elements beyond the imperative mood.

In terms of both instruction and assessment, the adoption of techniques like

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

demonstration, natural dialogues, and TPR storytelling not only permitted usage

beyond the realm of the command but demonstrated the efficacy of TPR in post-

introductory levels of second language acquisition (Asher, 2001d; Seely & Romijn,

2001). As for the incorrect assumption that TPR has been effective only in instruction

with young children, Asher’s research (1969, 2001d) indicated that older language

learners exposed to TPR actually outperformed younger students exposed to the

same method. Thus, teachers who subscribed to these fallacies surrounding Total

Physical Response assigned a nonexistent pedagogical rigidity to the method and

subsequently denied their students an effective and vibrant means of foreign language

instruction and assessment.

Assessment SAssessment S

Assessment S

trategies Using trategies Using

trategies Using

otal Physical Responseotal Physical Response

otal Physical Response

Assessment of Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational ModesAssessment of Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes

Assessment of Interpretive, Interpersonal, and Presentational Modes

Of all the core proficiencies in language learning, TPR techniques are most

easily and directly applied in assessing listening comprehension. The strong

relationship between oral production and bodily response that comprises the

foundation of the Total Physical Response method allows the teacher to use TPR to

evaluate how well students comprehend production in the target language according

to how they respond to the teacher’s output in the second language. Asher (2001a)

referred to this process as the “language body conversation”

(p. 9). Assessment via

this strategy may be as simple as a game of “Simon Says,” where the students

respond appropriately according to the commands issued by the teacher. The

evaluation of student progress is based on the number and complexity levels of the

tasks they are asked to complete. As student comprehension and production increase,

the assessment may be varied so that some students are giving instructions in the

target language while others carry out the commands. In this case, the instructor

evaluates the students according to how accurately the students give and respond

to the commands issued during the test. Thus, the teacher would have the potential

to evaluate student oral proficiency, as well as listening comprehension, at least on

a basic level.

At more advanced levels, listening comprehension can be assessed through a

variation of TPR Storytelling. In this format, the teacher would create a “mini-

story” using the elements that are to be assessed. Students would act out the story

based upon their interpretation of the events in the teacher’s story. Assessment

would be evaluated on the accuracy with which the student portrays the story. The

advantage to this type of assessment is that it provides for evaluation of listening

proficiency in longer, more complex linguistic structures within a given context, as

opposed to the relatively basic assessment using short commands.

Another possible option using the TPR Storytelling strategy as a listening

assessment is to have the teacher relate a story incorporating the material to be

assessed. In this case, however, the students would draw a picture or a scene that

depicts the teacher’s story. Evaluation would be based upon the accuracy of the

visual representation of the events in the story (Asher, 2001c). On the surface, this

particular approach to assessment may not appear to conform to the format of

Total Physical Response as an Assessment Tool 49

classical TPR. The act of drawing, however, is actually a physical response to a

linguistic stimulus, adding a kinesthetic dimension to the traditionally emphasized

audio/visual approaches to foreign language instruction and assessment.

Seely & Romijn (2001) state that listening comprehension is such a fundamental

element of Total Physical Response that this particular skill does not actually have

to be assessed. In-class instruction using TPR provides the teacher with opportunities

for informal assessment, but formally assessing listening proficiency allows teachers

to determine whether or not the individual student actually comprehends output in

the foreign language as opposed to merely mimicking the gestures of the other

students. Moreover, current accountability trends in education put additional pressure

on teachers to formalize areas of assessment that may have been previously evaluated

in a satisfactory manner on an informal basis. Thus, foreign language instructors

should be aware of the possibilities that TPR presents as a viable means of formally

assessing listening proficiency.

Since oral proficiency is the language acquisition skill most closely associated

with listening proficiency, it would not be unreasonable to suppose that oral

proficiency assessment using Total Physical Response would be closely associated

with the assessment strategies used to measure listening comprehension. A key

aspect of oral production–and hence, assessment, in TPR–is a focus on “role

reversal,” in which the instructional emphasis in the second language shifts from

the teacher’s producing and demonstrating output to student production (Seely &

Romijn, 2001). At the basic levels, students would effect the role reversal in simple

command-response assessments discussed in the previous section on listening

assessment, the difference being that the evaluative focus would be on oral

production rather than on the response to the commands.

During subsequent phases of foreign language instruction, students may be

assessed orally through the development of dialogues or mini-stories involving

natural action dialogues and the TPR Storytelling method, strategies that allow the

teacher to monitor student fluency in addition to the accuracy of oral production.

When assessing through the natural action dialogues and TPR Storytelling, the

teacher should clearly designate the words or structures that are to be assessed, and

it is essential that the students have been previously exposed to the material in

question. Moreover, while fluency should be monitored, it should not be the major

evaluative priority. Rather, primary importance in oral assessment should be given

to the comprehensibility of the student utterances.

Assessment of Presentational and Interpretive ModesAssessment of Presentational and Interpretive Modes

Assessment of Presentational and Interpretive Modes

Although most closely associated with direct listening and oral assessment,

Total Physical Response provides options for evaluating written and reading

proficiency. To test writing skills, teachers may restructure the command-response

assessment used for aural/oral assessment so that students respond to the teacher’s

physical stimuli in a written format, beginning with simple commands and

progressing towards more complex structures as students become more competent

in the target language.

Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education

Another means of measuring student achievement in writing is through TPR

dictation (Seely & Romijn, 2001). In TPR dictation, the teacher models the items

to be assessed through physical demonstration before orally presenting the sentence

that is to be written by the students. Thus the item to be evaluated is presented

through both kinesthetic and oral modalities. In using the TPR dictation, it is very

important that the teacher refrain from using contexts and linguistic items that have

yet to be formally presented in the instructional environment. Furthermore, the

demonstrations must be free from ambiguity, and the oral delivery must be given

clearly and at an appropriate conversational rate for the skill level of the students

being tested. Other means of assessing writing include presenting students with

pictures or images involving the material to be assessed and having the students

write a passage or dialogue based on the visual stimulus and having them develop

natural action dialogues in a written format (Seely & Romijn, 2001). These written

dialogues can be used not only to assess written proficiency in the target language

but also serve as a possible basis upon which to assess proficiency in both oral and

reading skills.

As a result of the comparatively passive nature of reading, as opposed to

listening, speaking, and writing, the assessment of reading proficiency through TPR

may pose the greatest challenge to foreign language teachers. Evaluation of reading

skills, however indirectly, is still possible through TPR, especially in the formats of

the natural action dialogue and TPR Storytelling. Through these approaches, the

student reads materials that cover the information to be tested, with either the teacher

or the other students in the class acting out what the student reads. In an assessment

situation, the stories and dialogues may be more effective if they are teacher-

generated, but it would be quite feasible for students to create the dialogue or story

(thus reinforcing writing proficiency). Role reversal plays an important part in

reading assessment, as the students being evaluated are providing the stimulus, and

the teacher or other nonevaluated members of the class are responding to what is

being read. Students may be evaluated on criteria similar to those found in native-

language reading instruction, including fluency, decoding skills, and comprehension,

while being engaged in the assessment through an interactive format.

Potential Challenges to Potential Challenges to

Potential Challenges to

TPR TPR

TPR

AssessmentAssessment

Assessment

While Total Physical Response offers the foreign language instructor the means

by which to assess students who learn in authentic contexts through a variety of

intelligences, the strategy presents potential drawbacks if it is misused. If, for

example, the context used to assess the target language were “bizarre” or overly

strange, then language learning could be compromised because of the student’s

inability to manipulate the target language in an authentic situation, not to mention

the context presented in the assessment (Omaggio, 1986). Omaggio even asserts

that the greatest drawbacks to TPR derive from its “incongruence to proficiency

goals” (p. 75). Indeed, some ideas and concepts are so abstract and difficult to

present that they do not readily lend themselves to assessment through TPR.

Additionally, some practitioners may find the indirect nature by which TPR assesses

Total Physical Response as an Assessment Tool 51

reading too problematic to be of practical value for use in the classroom.

Overutilization of Total Physical Response may result in what has been termed

“adaptation,” whereby students cease to respond to the physical stimulus that

underpins the TPR method (Seely & Romijn, 2001). Finally, some learners may

find TPR to be exceedingly uncomfortable or embarrassing, not only hindering

assessment but also adding to the type of anxiety that Asher wishes to avoid.

ConclusionConclusion

Conclusion

The issues involving context selection, proficiency challenges, adaptation, and

student comfort level must certainly be taken into consideration when one employs

the Total Physical Response method, not only as an assessment tool, but also as a

pedagogical approach to foreign language instruction. Practitioners, however, need

to remember that no one method of instruction or assessment will be completely

effective with students in a foreign language course. As with instruction, the question

facing foreign language teachers in dealing with assessment issues should not be

which method to use in assessing students, but rather which combination of

approaches will work best to effectively measure student achievement. When used

in concert with other assessment techniques, Total Physical Response offers a

dynamic and engaging means by which to test foreign language proficiency in

authentic contexts across a range of student intelligences in such a way as to stimulate

enthusiasm not just for a particular course or teacher, but for the desire to develop

foreign language learning on a lifelong basis.

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