"Tracking Foreign Language Proficiency: Great (and. not so great) Expectations"
Dr. Susan Gass
University Distinguished Professor
Michigan State University
Wednesday, March 30th
4:00-5:00PM
Location: Barbie Tootle Room at The Ohio Union
Reception to follow
In this talk, I will discuss the results of a federally-funded, large-data project, carried out at three state universities. Over a three-year period of time, we collected speaking, listening, and reading proficiency data from students studying 10 languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. This resulted in a database of more than 9000 tests from students in years 1-4 of foreign language programs. I will report data from some of these languages focusing on the following areas: 1) What does it take to reach advanced proficiency?, 2) What levels of proficiency do language majors reach? and 3) Does the starting point of language study matter?, 4) What about heritage status?, and 5) How can students be incentivized? I will end with a discussion of the public availability of this large database.