Foreign-Language Performance Assessments

Foreign-Language Performance Assessments

In this article in The Language Educator, Cherice Montgomery (Brigham Young University) describes her realization as a teacher that she wanted her tests to do more than assess students’ language competence. “What kind of language learners are my assessments constructing?” she asked herself. “Who do I want my students to become? How might I use the power of assessment to transform language teaching and learning in meaningful ways?” This line of thinking led her to develop performance-based assessments that helped students build confidence in their language skills, become strategic language users, put their skills to work solving real problems, and make substantive contributions to society. Here are the steps she followed to develop performance assessments:

  • Develop a meaningful topic with real-world applications.
  • Locate culturally authentic texts to build students’ knowledge of the topic so they have something meaningful to say about it.
  • Develop cognitively challenging interpretive texts.
  • Design opportunities for students to talk.
  • Support students in sharing their learning with templates, tools, and timely feedback.

Montgomery recommends the following websites as sources for authentic texts:

• Advertisements: Ads of the World: www.adsoftheworld.com 

• Children’s books: International Children’s Digital Library: 

www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/SimpleSearchCategory?ilang=English 

• Comic strips: Lambiek Comiclopedia: www.lambiek.net/artists/index.htm 

• Spanish Culture Connection: www.cultureconnection.wikispaces.com 

• Images or infographics: www.infografiasencastellano.com 

• Music: Charts All Over the World: www.lanet.lv/misc/charts 

• Newspapers: Kiosko: http://en.kiosko.net

• Realia: The Realia Project: www.realiaproject.org

• Texts: Librivox: https://librivox.org, Project Gutenberg: www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

• Reading Resources: www.readingresources4frenchteachers.wikispaces.com/Home 

“The Transformative Power of Performance-Based Assessments” by Cherice Montgomery in The Language Educator, February 2014 (Vol. 9, #2, p. 42-47, 53), no e-link available

From the Marshall Memo #528

 

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