The Language Department is taking a new approach to finals as they plan to eliminate the midyear final and replace it with the Language Performance Assessments in December.
Department Chair Lorri Starck-King felt that the finals schedule was too much of a time constraint.
“That hour and half period didn’t work for us. We were already doing it differently with the listening portion on different days.”
The 90-minute testing period favored the traditional multiple-choice exams, but when it came to accurately evaluating students’ proficiency in a language, it was not a good fit.
The Language Performance Assessments (LPA), however, allows each teacher to evaluate their students in the way of their choosing. Whether it’s through doing a project or writing on a topic, the language teachers plan to do an assessment that will be more realistic in demonstrating a student’s ability to speak the language.
French teacher Franck Greaux said, “It’s a great departure from the traditional semester exam, which was mostly knowledge based with multiple choice and fill in the blank. A lot of times, it was just like a list of vocabulary. [The Language Performance Assessments] lend themselves more to showing a student’s ability to understand, to read, and to write.”
“It might take 3 days to complete projects, which is much more valuable than sitting for 90 minutes doing standardized assessment,” German teacher Venera Stabinksy said.
Ana Del Rey, a Spanish teacher, agreed, “It’s not the same format of 110 questions. That just doesn’t feel very natural. [This new testing method] follows the trend of language teaching globally. It gives us the opportunity to assess with authentic materials.”
Another crucial aspect of it is that the assessment is not cumulative but instead, summative.
Greaux described the semester exam format as “a little bit of a dinosaur in a sense. You have to incorporate everything you have learned from the beginning of the semester.”
However, the LPA is more “topical with the things you have been studying in class,” Starck-King said.
Overall, the language department believes the new system will benefit students as well as teachers. “It will give students a better picture of themselves to know what they can really do. It will show them very clearly how well they are able to talk in a second language,” Del Rey said.
Stabinksy said, “It’s a good way for students to showcase what they’ve learned so far. It’s great feedback for teachers to see what we are doing well or where we have to go back and adjust our instruction.”
According to Greaux, the testing structure and timing will also prove advantageous to students. “The idea is now we work from the beginning and we are finishing the unit with this exam. [The students] know where they are heading. They have a sense of direction.” Additionally, the teachers intend to use the department’s new plan to reduce the students’ stress in January.
The LPA will be submitted into the grade books as regular tests, rather than the traditional finals’ 20% weight on a student’s grade. For example, Del Rey grades her students through listening, writing, and speaking. Starck-King said, “[The LPA] goes into whatever category it would have gone into as a regular assessment.”
However, Greaux has some hesitancy and concern towards how the assessments will pan out.
“Our department is the only one doing this. It feels like our department is on the other side of the mountain. I’m afraid of the consequences for our department. We no longer have the authority of a semester exam. What kind of message is it sending to the students? Some students will take it just as seriously because they are thorough and they care. And some might get the wrong idea,” Greaux said.
Nevertheless, the language department is excited to test this system out. “We want to see how you can engage with the language,” Starck-King said.