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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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Assessing Oral Proficiency in Foreign Languages
Recognizing that Pitt students must be proficient in foreign languages and cultures to become true global citizens, a group of faculty members is developing the University of Pittsburgh Oral Proficiency Language Assessment Instrument (UPOLAI). Claire Bradin Siskin, Linguistics, Elizabeth Wylie-Ernst, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Beatrice DeAngelis and Sarah Williams, Hispanic Languages and Literatures, and Brett Wells, French and Italian Languages and Literatures, were awarded a 2007 ACIE grant for their project, A Tool for Assessing Oral Proficiency in Foreign Languages. UPOLAI, a software tool for the assessment of oral language skills, is patterned after the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). OPI is considered the national standard for testing speaking proficiency, but it is costly, time-consuming, and can be administered to only one student at a time. UPOLAI represents an innovation because it will allow large groups to be tested simultaneously, and it is evaluated according to a fixed and objective set of criteria at a fraction of the cost of OPI. Students will be tested in the Robert Henderson Language Media Center where the UPOLAI software has been installed. Each student will be presented with a set of tasks on-screen and then prompted to record responses in French, German, or Spanish. The recorded responses will be sent automatically to a server. The audio files will be burned onto CDs and distributed to raters who have been specifically trained to evaluate the results of UPOLAI. The Robert Henderson Language Media Center will provide the necessary computer labs, server, staffing, and supplies for UPOLAI. Meanwhile, the University Center for International Studies (UCIS) has pledged support by funding training for OPI certification, workshops to train raters, and stipends for raters each semester. As part of this pilot study, the reliability of UPOLAI will be determined in a double-blind experiment in which two raters will score each test. The nationally recognized OPI will then be administered to a small cross section of students, and their OPI scores will be compared to the UPOLAI scores to measure the reliability of this new tool. Since a prototype of the software has already been developed, the pilot project will begin in the fall term. During the coming year, approximately 460 French, German, and Spanish students will take UPOLAI at the end of their fourth semester of language study. In the future, as this project continues to grow, additional templates will be developed to test proficiency in other languages taught at Pitt, including Hebrew and Portuguese.
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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![Photo: [left to right] Sarah Williams, Claire Bradiin Siskin, Beatrice DeAngelis, Elizabeth Wylie-Ernst](images/siskin.jpg)