Development and Assessment of the Effectiveness of an Undergraduate General Education Foreign Language Requirement
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2014-01-01
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© 2014 by American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. This article describes a faculty-led, multiyear process of formulating learning objectives and assessing the effectiveness of a foreign language requirement for all College of Arts and Sciences undergraduates at a research university. Three interrelated research questions were addressed: (1) What were the levels and patterns of language courses completed under the language requirement compared to those under the previous curriculum? (2) To what extent was the oral proficiency learning objective being attained? and (3) How did oral proficiency vary by course level and the patterns of courses completed to satisfy the language requirement? The oral proficiency of 614 students was assessed with the Simulated Oral Proficiency Interview and categorized in terms of ACTFL ratings. Study findings indicated that 76% of students met or exceeded the objective of the Intermediate Mid level of oral proficiency and that oral proficiency differed by course level and the pattern of courses completed to satisfy the language requirement. In particular, the impact of completing an advanced-level course was clear, which in turn had implications for curricular policies and academic advising. It is argued that faculty-led evaluation of program effectiveness, in which assessment approaches are both summative and formative and findings are routinely used to improve educational practices as well as document student learning, is the necessary context for developing an evidence-based approach to undergraduate language education.
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Thompson, RJ, I Walther, C Tufts, KC Lee, L Paredes, L Fellin, E Andrews, M Serra, et al. (2014). Development and Assessment of the Effectiveness of an Undergraduate General Education Foreign Language Requirement. Foreign Language Annals, 47(4). pp. 653–668. 10.1111/flan.12112 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/20442.
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Scholars@Duke
Robert J. Thompson
My research and teaching interests include how biological and psychosocial processes act together in human development and learning. One area of focus has been on the adaptation of children and their families to developmental problems and chronic illnesses, including sickle cell disease and cystic fibrosis. Another area of focus is enhancing undergraduate education through scholarship on teaching and learning and fostering the development of empathy and identity.
Ingeborg C. Walther
Ingeborg Walther is Professor of the Practice Emerita of German Studies. A graduate of Stanford University (B.A.), Tufts University (M.A.) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D.), she joined the faculty of Duke University in 1994. Since then she served as German Language Program Director, Director of Undergraduate Studies, and Chair of the Department of German Studies. From 2007 - 2016, she served as Associate Dean of Curriculum and Course Development in Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. Her major research interests include German Romanticism, 19th and 20th century German theater, poetry, and art songs, second language acquisition, applied linguistics, and critical pedagogy.
Her book, The Theater of Franz Xaver Kroetz, deals with the intersections of language, culture, and identity with which she continues to be concerned. She has also published and presented numerous papers on issues of language acquisition, culture, curriculum, and pedagogy, exploring productive links among what are often perceived as separate and unrelated fields of inquiry. She has put these ideas into practice with the creation of a coherent, articulated German Language Program Curriculum which integrates language and culture at all levels, while introducing students to some of the primary concerns of our discipline: the relationships between culture and identity, language and power, reader and text, text and context. The workshops and presentations she has given on using poetry, music, and theater in the language classroom show how important cultural texts can be used even at beginning levels in substantive, intellectually challenging ways, while taking fuller account of the affective and extra-linguistic dimensions of communication and learning.
Professor Walther served on numerous committees and task forces which have promoted and restructured foreign language study at Duke. She has also been an active member of the profession, having served on the Executive Committee of the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages, and presented regularly at national and regional conferences of the Modern Languages Association, the American Association of Teachers of German, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, and the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators. She is the recipient of many honors and awards, including the Robert B. Cox Distinguished Teaching Award for her excellence in the classroom and her contributions to undergraduate teaching at Duke.
Clare J. Tufts
Second language acquisition, Foreign Language Pedagogy, Bande dessinée
Kun Shan Carolyn Lee
Her research interests are foreign language curriculum development, study abroad education, curriculum articulation, intercultural communicative competence, Service-Learning and community-based language learning, and Chinese for specific purposes.
Luciana Fellin
Luciana Fellin (fellin@duke.edu) Professor of the Practice of Italian and Linguistics, Director of the Italian Language Program. I received a Laurea in English and German Literature from the University of Bologna, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona where I specialized in sociolinguistics with a dissertation on language socialization practices and dialect revival in Italy. I have taught at the Universities of Trento and Bologna, as well as, San Diego State. My research interests include sociolinguistic aspects of second language learning and teaching as well as the study of language ideologies as linked to language obsolescence, maintenance and revival. I am currently working on an ethnographic project investigating language and identity in Italian American communities which include third, fourth+ generation Italian Americans whose ancestors immigrated to the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Italians who have come to the US in the most recent, 21st century migratory wave. In addition to exquisitely linguistic practices such as code switching and mixing I look at gesture, prosody and food related symbolic practices and their role in identity construction. Recent discussion of this work can be found in “The Question of Language in the Italian American Experience” in L’Italia allo Specchio, (2015) Finotti, Johnston (Eds.) Venezia Marislio Editore pp. 449-462, and “The Italian new wave: identity work and socialization practices in a community of new Italian immigrants in America.” In Forum Italicum, May 2014 pp. 1-19. Work on language teaching and learning includes “Come insegnare italiano agli oriundi italiani? Il caso degli italo-americani.”, DITALS, edited by Pierangela Diadori, DITALS, vol. 7 (2010), Università per Stranieri di Siena; “Observe, document, reflect elaborate! Language learning through ethnographic observation and collaborative projects” in Gavioli, L. & F. Zanettin (Eds.) TAIL: Translation And Interpreting for Language Learners: A volume of teaching/learning activities in honour of Guy Aston, Anna Ciliberti and Daniela Zorzi. Associazione Italiana Linguistica Applicata, November, 2018.
Edna Andrews
Edna Andrews is Professor of Linguistics and Cultural Anthropology, Nancy & Jeffrey Marcus Distinguished Professor of Slavic & Eurasian Studies, and Chair of the Linguistics Program at Duke University. She received her PhD from Indiana University and holds an honorary doctorate from St. Petersburg State University (Russia). Her books include Markedness theory: The union of asymmetry and semiosis in language (1990), About Sintetizm, Mathematics and Other Things: E.I. Zamiatin's novel WE (1994, in Russian), The Semantics of Suffixation (1996), Conversations with Lotman: Cultural semiotics in language, literature and cognition (2003), A Calculus of Meaning: Studies in Markedness, Distinctive Features and Deixis (1996, edited volume). Her newest book is Neuroscience and Multilingualism (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Recent articles in cognitive neuroscience and semiotics include "H.M's Language Skills: Clues about Language and the Medial Temporal Lobe" (2005), "Semiospheric transitions: A key to modelling translation" (2009), "Language and Brain: Recasting Meaning in the Definition of Human Language" (2011). Professor Andrews is the guest editor for a special issue devoted to brain and language of the journal Brain Sciences (2013). Her current research includes an extensive longitudinal fMRI study of second language acquisition and multilingualism. The first paper published from this study appeared in Brain Sciences 2013, 3(2), 849-876 (Multilingualism and fMRI: A Longitudinal Study of Second Language Acquisition. Co-authored with C. Casabo-Voyvodic, J. Voyvodic and J. Wright.) Professor Andrews was awarded the University Scholar/Teacher award on September 26, 2013 by the President of Duke University, Richard Brodhead.
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