ADFL Projects

The MLA's Articulation Initiative:
High School to College in Foreign Language Programs

Assessment and Articulation Connection
June K. Phillips, Weber State University

A new generation of assessment measures could dramatically improve articulation not only between high school and college-university but also between any two levels of instruction. As I argued in an earlier article ("If Not Consensus"), two conditions need to be met for that improvement to occur. The first requires us to rethink assessment so that it reflects student performances in the sense of what students can do with language--that is, how they function in the language. Such assessment would evaluate the tasks students carry out and the quality of that achievement. The second condition requires that the faculty at the higher level of instruction commit itself to designing a program that builds upon student performances and enhances the content of the learning students receive.

For too long, neither of these conditions has been met. In higher education, placement testing, whether standardized or homegrown, tends to be unscientific and arbitrary in both design and application. It is almost always based upon a deficit model of evaluation: on what the student does not know in terms of grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension. The result is that on the basis of negative knowledge, students are recycled into the lowest possible course; in essence they are placed according to what they do not know. Turning that model into one where students' performances, knowledge, and content coverage can be documented so that the next level of instruction moves learning forward--from where the learner is to the next step--will improve the flawed attempts at articulation of the past. It is not possible to articulate in language learning by setting up a set of discrete items unrelated to how learners learn or how language is used and by expecting students to meet them somehow before advancing. That kind of expectation takes no measure of what they know and what they can do.

As the language-specific organizations have voiced their support of standards as an organizing principle for K-16 foreign language education, it is incumbent upon us to investigate and pilot new assessments for dual purposes. First, assessments must inform students about their progress and achievements in the area of standards and goals. Good assessments are comprehensible to students; good assessments let them know what they can do and where their performance is inadequate or in a developmental stage (see Liskin-Gasparro for new ideas on assessment and testing). As we find means of having students collect the results of assessment (e.g., portfolios, electronic dossiers), we must use that information to articulate students. Such articulation does require a greater commitment of time than scanning a bubble sheet; it does require changing curriculum and syllabi to advance learning rather than to cover content; it does require that the higher level articulate with the lower in acknowledgment that the conditions for learning at one level are not the same as at the next.

Works Cited

Liskin-Gasparro, J. "Assessment: From Content Standards to Student Performance," National Standards: A Catalyst for Reform. Ed. R. C. Lafayette. ACTFL Foreign Language Education Ser. Lincolnwood: Natl. Textbook, 1996.

Phillips, June K. "If Not Consensus, at Least Coherence and Transparency." ADFL Bulletin 26.3 (1995): 37-43.

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