Empirical Validation of Reading Proficiency Guidelines

Writing in postsecondary foreign language contexts in North America has received far less attention in the curriculum than the development of oral proficiency. This article describes one institution's process of confronting the challenges not only of recognizing the contribution of writing to students' overall linguistic development, but also of implementing a program‐wide process of assessing writing proficiency. The article reports writing proficiency ratings that were collected over a 5‐year period for more than 4,000 learners in 10 languages, poses questions regarding the proficiency levels that postsecondary learners achieved across 2 years of foreign language instruction, and relates writing proficiency scores to Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview ratings for a subset of students. The article also articulates the crucial relationship between professional development and writing as well as the role of technology in collecting and assessing writing samples.

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing and Sustaining a Foreign Language Writing Proficiency Assessment Program at the Postsecondary Level

Bernhardt

Molitoris

Romeo

et al. 2015

“…These procedures have been shown to result in high levels of interrater reliability when testing speaking proficiency (Surface & Dierdorff, 2003) and should in fact be used when assessing listening and writing. In addition, recent research has demonstrated that CR testing principles (as depicted in Table 3), including level-by-level test design and floor and ceiling scoring, can be applied to the receptive skills of reading and listening comprehension (Clifford & Cox, 2013;Cox & Clifford, 2014). In addition, recent research has demonstrated that CR testing principles (as depicted in Table 3), including level-by-level test design and floor and ceiling scoring, can be applied to the receptive skills of reading and listening comprehension (Clifford & Cox, 2013;Cox & Clifford, 2014).…”

Section: Nr and Cr Scoringmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rationale for Criterion‐Referenced Proficiency Testing

Clifford

2016

Self Cite

This article summarizes some of the technical issues that add to the complexity of language testing. It focuses in particular on the criterion‐referenced nature of the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines—Speaking; and it proposes a criterion‐referenced interpretation of the ACTFL guidelines for reading and listening. It then demonstrates how using criterion‐referenced testing and scoring enhances the accuracy of reading and listening proficiency ratings while also providing informative feedback to learners.

“…), then there is evidence that the scale can be operationalized as hypothesized. A further discussion of these issues and how they apply to language assessments can be found in Brown, Dewey, and Cox (2014); Clifford and Cox (2013); Cox and Clifford (2014); Eckes (2011);McNamara (1996);and McNamara and Knoch (2012). To apply this model to a proficiencybased EI test, a construct map (Wilson, 2009) was designed to align EI items with the types of speakers who would be successful responding to them.…”

Section: Creating a Proficiency-based Ei Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Proficiency‐Based vs. Performance‐Based Items With Elicited Imitation Assessment

Cox

Bown

Burdis

2015

Self Cite

This study investigates the effect of proficiency‐ vs. performance‐based elicited imitation (EI) assessment. EI requires test‐takers to repeat sentences in the target language. The accuracy at which test‐takers are able to repeat sentences highly correlates with test‐takers' language proficiency. However, in EI, the factors that render an item more complex are still being investigated. In order to investigate whether item difficulty and test performance were different between proficiency‐ and performance‐based tests, two EI instruments were created—one to measure proficiency with items from a general corpus and another to measure language for specific purposes (LSP) performance with items from a domain‐specific corpus. The two instruments were then administered to 98 subjects of varying proficiency. The mean score for the LSP performance test (normalx¯ = 0.51) was significantly higher than the mean score for the proficiency test (normalx¯ = 0.44, p < 0.001). In addition, item difficulties for the LSP items were significantly lower than item difficulties for the general items (p < 0.05), indicating that the content of the EI items affected item difficulty. Data suggest that the two approaches to EI assess different constructs and cannot be used interchangeably.