I. Educational Goals:
a. At the completion of the major in French, German and Spanish
our students should have reached the American Council on the Teaching
of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standard of "intermediate high"
in reading, writing, listening comprehension, and speaking. This level
corresponds to the Indiana Professional Standards Board's requirement
for Foreign Language teachers. Additionally, our majors will be well-versed
in the culture and literature of the language they have studied.
b. Students in CLAS who are required to take four semesters of
a foreign language should attain an "intermediate low" by the
ACTFL scale.
c. All students taking language courses in our department will become
acquainted with issues involving course-cultural communication, world
geography, and have developed an appreciation for and sensitivity to people
of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds.
II. Methodologies for Measuring the Attainment of Educational Goals
a. The Department has applied for a grant from "Information
Technologies Funding" to purchase a battery of high-quality, proficiency
based assessment tools for reading, writing, listening and speaking. The
Minnesota Language Proficiency Assessment (MLPA) Exam was developed through
funding support from the U.S. Department of Education, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and the University of Minnesota. The MLPA are currently
available to test proficiency in reading, writing, listening comprehension
and speaking at both the intermediate low and high levels.
b. Both majors and minors would be required to complete a cultural
portfolio. The department is in the process of reviewing our various practices
in view of crafting a set of guidelines that would obtain across all languages.
We have a committee currently working on these guidelines.
c. We intend to develop a senior-level capstone course that would
help students see the commonalities which unite them despite studying
different languages.
d. The department has developed an exit interview/questionnaire
for graduating seniors to assess their experience in the department. (See
attached).
III. Process for Using Assessment Information
a. The MLPA exams will afford us a wealth of data on both our
four semester-language sequence and on the skill level obtained by our
majors and minors. The results will help guide our course design, textbook
choices, and use of various methodologies.
b. With the papers that students submit for their portfolio projects
and capstone courses, we will be able to determine if students are truly
grasping the critical issues of comparative cultural analysis, possess
an adequate understanding of world geography, and have come to appreciate
national and ethnic differences.
c. Results from the exit interview will allow us to have a better
sense of the student's experience of the program. We would use the data
pro-actively to make improvement and adjustments where necessary.
IV. Participation of all constituencies
All full-time members of the department have participated in crafting
the above-mentioned plan. Two of our members (Cheri Brown and Tammy Morgan)
have served on the assessment committee and have shared their expertise
with the rest of us. We need to work on encouraging greater participation
on the behalf of our majors and alumni in this process. To that end, we
are developing a Newsletter and generating a list of alumni to whom we
can address these efforts.
V. Records
The Department of World Language Studies keeps an archive of student
portfolios, student surveys, and other assessment data, including assessment
reports, on file in the department office. Copies of this plan will be
placed on the department "H" drive.
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