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The Accuracy of Teacher Judgment of the Oral Proficiency of High School Foreign Language Students
Author(s) -
Levine Martin G.,
Haus George J.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
foreign language annals
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.258
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1944-9720
pISSN - 0015-718X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1944-9720.1987.tb02915.x
Subject(s) - language proficiency , psychology , foreign language , class (philosophy) , rating scale , mathematics education , scale (ratio) , agreement , linguistics , developmental psychology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science
The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of teacher judgment of the oral proficiency of pupils in French and Spanish high school classes. Does such teacher judgment differ significantly from standardized ratings of pupil oral proficiency on the ACTFL oral interview scale? Eight experienced teachers of French and Spanish who had had no previous proficiency assessment training served as subjects. Each teacher‐subject was required to read the descriptions for each level of the ACTFL scale and then to predict the ACTFL rating of four students randomly selected from her class. Subsequently, 30 of these students were rated on the ACTFL oral interview by two certified testers. Actual ACTFL ratings for these pupils were compared with predicted ACTFL ratings of teachers. Results indicate that 1) teachers consistently overrate pupil performance and 2) the letter grade of a student in the foreign language class severely biases the accuracy of the teacher's judgment regardless of actual oral proficiency.