Assessment Archive

In this presentation we will report on our efforts to norm the questions that will be used in the Japanese online placement test, to be administered for the first time this coming August. We will present our analysis of the norming test results and the measures we took to handle problematic questions. We will discuss…

Currently, Japanese lecturers create and give 60-minute walk-in placement exams for new students one week before each semester starts. The lecturers grade each test manually, so the results may vary depending on how and by whom the tests are graded and various subjective factors. Therefore, the Japanese Program needs a more efficient and objective method…

The original version of the Chinese placement test at Berkeley was developed ten years ago. With the rapid advancement of web technology as well as instructional changes in the Chinese curriculum, our placement test needed an update. This presentation will describe the process we went through in redesigning the test, including the incorporation of demographic…

Ensuring Assessment Use: Linking Design to Actions by Yukiko Watanabe, Center for Teaching and Learning University of California, Berkeley Student learning outcomes assessment provides college foreign language educators with an opportunity to communicate and ensure the value of foreign language education. It is also an opportunity to collectively focus on meaningful issues and important concerns…

Using Assessment for Understanding and Improving Language Education by John Norris, Professor of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Along with curriculum and instruction, assessment plays a fundamental role in shaping the value and effectiveness of language education programs.  Assessment can and should be used for illuminating learners’ needs, monitoring progress, determining outcomes,…

Language Policy in Multilingual Israel: Ideologies, Conflicts, Rights, and Research by Elana Shohamy, (Professor, Tel Aviv University), Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley Language policies, whether on the educational or societal level, are products of political, social, economic, and education ideologies. As such, languages and language policies are used as major symbols of…

Tearing us Apart Again: the Paradigm Wars and the Search for Validity by Tim McNamara, University of Melbourne Language testing research is an increasingly divided field, as it responds to the paradigm shifts in broader applied linguistics research.  On the one hand, language testing validation research places a fundamental emphasis on the generalizability of results…

OPI Colloquium   Proficiency/ Performance/ Achievement Testing Ray Clifford, Defense Language Institute, Monterey OPI and the Foreign Language Standards June Phillips, Weber State University, Utah The ACTFL OPI and Oral Proficiency Guidelines as a Framework for Curricular Planning: The Lesson; the Instructional Unit; the Semester; the Program Ben Rifkin, University of Wisconsin The Validation Process…

This is an action research study that reports on using student portfolios in a second language (L2) Arabic class. The goal of this study was to examine the validity of using portfolios as an L2 assessment procedure and to ascertain the effectiveness of portfolios as an L2 learning tool. In this class, portfolios ...

Second language teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is a sophisticated combination of pedagogical and content knowledge. This study explores the acquisition and articulation of PCK, highlighting ...