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Assessing Students' Oral Language: One School District's Response
Author(s) -
Manley Joan H.
Publication year - 1995
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.1944-9720.1995.tb00771.x
Subject(s) - school district , german , curriculum , foreign language , language assessment , psychology , language proficiency , test (biology) , mathematics education , pedagogy , medical education , medicine , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , biology
This article describes a project undertaken over a 30‐month period by a large Texas public school district. The project's major aims were as follows: (1) to familiarize the district's foreign language teachers with oral language assessment; (2) to develop a tape‐mediated assessment instrument, modeled on the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview, for French, German, and Spanish at the end of Level II and for Japanese at the end of Level III; and (3) to administer the test to the district's language students. This project was funded out of the school district's enhancement fund and directed by the ESOL/Foreign Language curriculum specialist. This project not only familiarized teachers with oral assessment but also with classroom activities designed to achieve satisfactory results. It also helped teachers cooperate with each other in a professional endeavor.