Did you know that the Language Center employs approximately twice as many undergraduate student staff as continuing non-student staff? Our undergraduate student staff provide primary assistance to students and instructors in public areas like the Main Office and Multimedia Lab, and also provide support to smaller teams like the Dev Studio and TandemPlus. The Language Center could not run without our dedicated and skilled undergraduate team members.

The Student Employee Leadership Program (SELP) provides an opportunity to recognize student employees who go above and beyond expectations in their work at the university through the annual SELPie awards for Outstanding Student Employees. The 2013 winners from the Language Center are:

• Abdulkarim Maalin: Testing Assistant and Somali LPE Developer
• Francisco Salinas Vega: World Language Day Assistant
• Jessica Troyan: Classroom Support Lead Student
• Henry Wahl: Main Office Lead Student
• Alaina Witt: Dev Studio Assistant and AV Developer

The Language Testing Program will have several staff changes for spring semester. We are very pleased that Mary Norman is returning part-time from leave and will resume her role as Testing Coordinator for French & Italian, German, Scandinavian & Dutch, and the less commonly taught languages. Sherry Scarborough will fill the remainder of Mary's position. Sherry has worked with the Testing Program for the past two years in other roles.

Gabriela Sweet, who filled Mary's position last fall, will return to her regular position as Test Development Coordinator. We are very grateful to Gabriela for her dedication and willingness to take on different roles.

The Language Proficiency Exam (LPE) is integrated into the fourth-semester courses of many languages. Students in fourth-semester Spanish take the reading, listening and writing portions of the LPE during regular class periods, and beginning Fall 2012, they are the first language classes to take the three parts of the LPE online. Until now, the LPE reading and listening have been taken online as the final exam. However, the LPE writing test was still on paper in the students' classroom. The writing section is rated by instructors, whereas the the reading and listening sections are computer-graded.

Last week all students in Spanish 1004, 1014, and 1044 came to Jones Hall during a regular class period to take the LPE writing test online in one of the computer labs. This change is possible due to upgrades to the online LPE delivery system that allow students' exams to be linked to a specific course section. This means for example, that all exams taken by Spanish 1004-006 students can be linked for grading purposes. When the new system is fully implemented, instructors will be able pull up student exams by section through the grader interface and evaluate the individual tests.

The Language Testing Program now offers computerized Language Proficiency Exams (LPEs) in more languages than ever before. Tests currently in development feature culturally-rich authentic source material such as clips from modern Korean film, a look at the Somali-speaking community in the Twin Cities, and much more!

Example of culturally authentic material that could be used in LPE

Computerized LPEs were established in 2001. Hundreds of language students take them each semester to fulfill the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) language requirement and as a gateway to advanced language study. The mission of the Language Testing Program has remained constant: to accurately assess students' ability to listen, read, write and speak in the target language.

However, the program has changed and grown since 2001. The LPE is constantly being improved and the pace of modernization and innovation has picked up in the last few years. The Language Testing Program has focused on two new goals since 2010:  to serve as many language students as possible and to improve the students' exam experience by including contemporary and diverse media from the target language culture.

Before 2010, a computerized test was available only for students of French, German and Spanish and a few related languages. Students of Asian and other less commonly taught languages were limited to paper-based tests, or had no exam options at all.

Tests are now in place for Arabic, Chinese, Hmong, Italian, Japanese and Russian, and there is a second version of the Spanish LPE. In addition, development is underway for Finnish, Korean, Somali, and Swahili. All of these tests were made possible through an influx of funding from Title VI and other sources, along with a committed effort on the part of the Language Testing Program and the individual language programs to work together tirelessly and collaboratively. Once all of the newer exams are completed, the LPE will be available for almost all non-Classical languages offered in CLA and will reflect the diversity of languages available at the University of Minnesota.

As new tests are created, the Language Testing Program and the developers aim to bring new depth to the student experience and to conform more closely to current trends in second language pedagogy with increased emphasis on culturally-rich contexts. The new exams retain the original LPE goal of validating the work of students in their four semesters at the university by providing an opportunity to show what they can do with the target language in a communicative context.

However, they are not just tests - they are also learning opportunities for students, highlighting something new about the culture, history, or people of the target language through the use of authentic materials. Students may learn, for example, how traditional holiday celebrations have changed over time as societies become increasingly multicultural. There are also explorations of how gender roles have shifted and how these shifts impact language as well as cultural practice. One exam features an innovative, and perhaps surprising, environmental initiative. Another explores the lyrics of a popular song from a YouTube video.

The piloting process for new LPEs often includes a survey of student opinions about the test. Reactions to the new authentic content have been overwhelmingly positive. Test-takers have said that they were surprised and pleased to see that they had no difficulty reading texts that they might encounter on a daily basis in the target culture.

Here are some sample student reactions:

The Korean LPE also offers a significant technological innovation: the incorporation of authentic video segments into the listening section. The test includes five diverse clips from modern Korean film showing natural and interesting interactions between native speakers. The use of authentic video is an excellent platform from which to assess listening proficiency, since it ties closely to the construct of listening in a communicative context, where meaning is negotiated based on a variety of input sources. The Korean listening exam has already been piloted once, and the response to the test was enthusiastically positive. Students reported that they especially enjoyed the video segments and felt confident that they could understand content overall, even though there may have been a few words unfamiliar to them.

The Somali listening section will include some authentic video segments as well. This exam stands out because it is set locally and explores the lives of immigrants integrating with the larger community as they share their language and culture - a reflection of the changing face of the Twin Cities.

Since 2010, new LPE creation has been led by Gabriela Sweet, who has worked tirelessly to organize a rotating team of developers, coordinate with multiple departments and stakeholders, and keep all projects on time and moving forward. The Korean, Somali, and Swahili development teams also include Language Center AV Developer Alaina Witt, Item Reviewers Xinyi Wu and Meghan McFadden, and LC Technical Coordinator Diane Rackowski.

The current language-specific developers are:

Finnish: Dan Karvonen, Jaana Viljakainen
Korean: Hangtae Cho, Yunseong Cheong
Somali: Said Ahmed, Abdulkarim Maalin
Swahili: Angaluki Muaka

Much of the funding for Korean development has been provided by a CLA InfoTech Tools for Discovery Grant. Title VI funding managed by the Institute for Global Studies has provided some travel and development grants for Somali and Swahili.

The Language Testing Program and the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures plan to present the new Korean listening section featuring authentic video later this winter. The U of M language community will have an opportunity to see how the classic LPE format can be modernized with technology to provide students with an educational, culturally-rich, and even enjoyable testing experience.

The Language Testing Program team of Monica Frahm, Mary Norman, Joanne Peltonen, Gabriela Sweet and Sondes Wooldridge has won a 2012 CLA Outstanding Service Award. The work group was recognized for supporting the testing needs of over 7200 students each year, as well as for its role in the development of new computerized Language Proficiency Exams (LPEs) for critical and high-enrollment languages.

Thanks to the Testing Program staff, the full LPE development team, and the support of language instructors and departments, CLA students of Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, and Russian now have access to the same computerized proficiency exams as students of French, German and Spanish. In addition, there is a second version of the Spanish test available, and development is underway for computerized tests in Hmong, Finnish and Korean.

You can read more about the new LPEs at Elsie Speaks. The Outstanding Service Awards will be presented at the CLA Staff Appreciation Ceremony on January 24.

Tuesday, September 27
1:30 - 3:00 p.m.
Jones 110

SPY on your students' on-line, in-class work!
GATHER up to 30 students in one high-tech classroom!
SPRAWL OUT on our brand-new comfy lounge furniture!

Come see the newly renovated walk-in Multimedia Lab and digital language labs, and learn more about Language Center services and facilities. Beverages and desserts will be served. Optional tech training and tours will be available.

While you enjoy coffee, cider and cookies, learn more about the following:

• Our completely renovated walk-in Multimedia Lab, Jones 135
  
• Our renovated classrooms, Jones 10 and 30
  
• New LPEs for critical and popular less commonly taught languages
  
• And more!
  

This year, hundreds of students of critical and popular less commonly taught languages will have access to the same computerized proficiency exams as students of French, German and Spanish. Exams for the following languages have recently been developed: Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and a second version of Spanish.

In late summer 2010, Monica Frahm, Testing Director, received an initial Title VI grant from the Institute for Global Studies (IGS) to begin development of new computerized Language Proficiency Exams (LPEs) for critical and high-enrollment languages. Prior to this major development project, computerized tests were only available to students of Danish, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. Since summer 2010, additional Title VI grant funding has been received, as well as funding from other sources, to continue development in multiple languages.

The LPE is one method that students can use to complete their second language requirement, and this test has several other purposes as well. It can be used to place students into upper division courses, and some language programs integrate the test into their curriculum and use it as their class final exam. Students who pass the LPE receive a text line on their transcript endorsing their language proficiency, and they can receive other documentation of language proficiency upon request.

There are four sections of the LPE: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. The LPE Development Team has created tests for the first three sections. The Speaking section for all languages is generally administered as a one-on-one Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), and it was not revised through this project. In most cases, development of the Writing and Listening sections went faster, and they were ready for piloting first. The Reading was generally completed last, as it is the most time-intensive section to develop.

In the past, LPEs were developed over the course of years and were often the product of a single, deeply committed instructor. The current project was different, because it formed a development team of instructors working on multiple languages simultaneously, under the direction of a single coordinator. The team, called the LPE Development Team, was able to collaborate and share resources. They also worked on a similar development schedule and with the same level of technical assistance and resources. This process allowed development to progress very quickly, while maintaining a high level of supervision and quality control.

Development has not always been easy, and with different schedules and the requirements of different funding sources, few developers have been able to stay with the project from start to end. However, the contributions of developers from different backgrounds, and with different skill sets, may have resulted in better tests for students.

All of the LPEs feature authentic materials, such as culturally-appropriate readings and audio recorded by native speakers, often in multiple dialects. The tests target the appropriate language level, and the test items cover a range of tasks, topics, and linguistic functions. The teams created the tests using a common test blueprint and are consistent with the programming used by other LPEs.

In addition to tests developed for languages listed above, the paper-based Hmong LPE has been incorporated into a computerized format for two modalities, and the third is under development this semester. There is also a new Finnish LPE in progress.

The LPE Development Team has been led by Coordinator Gabriela Sweet, who for over a year has corralled a rotating team of developers and juggled multiple languages, cultures, schedules, and deadlines. In addition to managing the development team and keeping the entire project on target, she has conducted stakeholder sessions with departments, taken advantage of any opportunity for piloting, managed to be friendly and cheerful, and amazingly enough, consistently greeted everyone in their native language.

The other core team member has been Lindsey Lahr, AV Tech, who has recorded and edited the listening sections, as well as completed all the multimedia work. Lindsey has been invaluable to the project in providing additional reviews and keeping teams on track and on schedule. Her creativity has given the new Reading exams, in particular, a very professional look.

Diane Rackowski, Technical Coordinator, has made an important contribution to the team's work by providing data after each piloting session, sometimes as quickly as twenty minutes after the session finished! Having these data enabled developers to analyze the performance of individual items and the test as a whole, and to then make informed decisions toward revision.

This project has been possible because of a large team of developers and instructors willing to review tests and contribute to piloting. A full list of developers is included at the bottom of this article.

As part of the piloting process, the team has surveyed students on their reactions to the tests. Students have reported that they enjoy taking the tests on the computer. From a survey after one of the new Reading tests: "I really like the way this test was set up and, in general, I feel the vocabulary was that which we had exposure to." And another comment: "I like the variety: some of the readings are articles, and some are actual pieces of literature."

Language instructors will have an opportunity to learn more about the the new tests at the upcoming Language Center Fall Open House, scheduled for Tuesday, September 27 at 1:30 PM.

LPE Development Team

Core Team:
Gabriela Sweet, Coordinator
Monica Frahm, Principle Investigator
Lindsey Lahr, AV Tech
Diane Rackowski, Technical Assistance

Language Developers:
Arabic: Hisham Khalek, Sondes Wooldridge
Chinese: Ka Po Chow, Hao Ji, Liu Ya, Quan Jiahong, Andie Fang Wang, Zhen Zou
Finnish: Dan Karvonen, Jaana Viljakainen
Hmong: Maxwell LeYang
Italian: Cristina Cocchi, Anna Olivero-Agney
Japanese: Hiroe Akimoto, Michiko Buchanan, Sachiko Horii, Liu Ya
Russian: Sachiko Horii, Kateryna Kent, Marina Posse, Maria Schweikert
Spanish: Adriana Gordillo, Joanne Peltonen, Gabriela Sweet, Naomi Wood
Cross-language validation team: Kateryna Kent, Xinyi Wu, Xi Yu

Special Thanks to:
Instructors from the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures; Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch; Department of French and Italian; Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; Department of Spanish and Portuguese

The Language Center and CARLA are sponsoring two spring 2011 ACTFL webinar series. These six webinars will be presented in Jones 35. All U of M language instructors and instructors in training are welcome to attend. Registration is not required. A discussion may follow some webinars, and this will be scheduled later. The schedule may need to be adjusted based on the availability of content.

Series One: Learner Progress on the ACTFL Proficiency Continuum
Presenter: Chantal P. Thompson, Professor of French at Brigham Young University (Utah)

Determining Where Our Students are on the ACTFL Proficiency Scale
Friday, April 1: 12:20 - 1:20, Jones 35
How can we gauge more accurately where our students are on the ACTFL scale? What matters is not what they know about the language, but what they can actually DO with it! How do we pinpoint their level within the Novice, Intermediate and Advanced ranges? This webinar will familiarize teachers with the assessment criteria of the ACTFL scale, and enable them to analyze and rate excerpts from actual Oral Proficiency Interviews. Instructional implications and insights will also be addressed.

Moving Students from Novice to Intermediate
Friday, April 8: 12:20 - 1:20, Jones 35
This webinar will address various strategies to help students move along the proficiency spectrum in more efficient ways. Among those strategies: integration of functions, content, accuracy and text type in course design and lesson planning; immersion in the target language; a higher-order learning approach to all elements of the language; a proper balance between structured and creative practice, and empowering students through pre-speaking activities.

Moving Students from Intermediate to Advanced
Friday, April 29: 12:20 - 1:20, Jones 35
How do we get students to go beyond the minimal answers they typically give? Using observable performance as our gauge, we will explore strategies and activities that enable students to cross more effectively the critical border from Intermediate to Advanced. The strategies introduced in Webinar 2 will take on a new dimension when applied to the difficult transition toward Advanced-level proficiency, where elaborations are paramount.

Series Two: Assessments to Measure and Build Language Performance
Presenter: Paul Sandrock, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction

Creating Interpretive Tasks Targeting Language Levels
Friday, April 15: 12:20 - 1:20, Jones 35
Interpretive communication is not an exercise in translation, but rather a focus on understanding the main idea and subsequent layers of details. Examine how to set up tasks in which students demonstrate how well they understand what they read, hear, or view. Expand your repertoire of how students can demonstrate their understanding without relying on production of the target language.

Designing Presentational Performance Tasks and Their Rubrics
Friday, May 6: 12:20 - 1:20, Jones 35
Presentational communication occurs in many ways, formal and informal. Get practical tips for designing assessments of presentational skills targeted at different levels of proficiency. Then experience a process for designing rubrics that provide students with feedback outlining how they can improve their performance.

Developing Communication Skills Through Interpersonal Performance Tasks
Wednesday, May 11: 12:20 - 1:20, Jones 35
Interpersonal communication involves an exchange of information or ideas with both partners actively negotiating meaning. Discover effective ways to set up tasks so that students focus on getting their message across and are motivated to give their strongest performance. Learn to design feedback mechanisms that reward what really counts in developing interpersonal communication skills.

The Language Center sponsored a three-day workshop on language proficiency assessment over Spring Break led by Dr. Robert Vicars, an ACTFL certified trainer. The first two days focused on oral proficiency, and third day on writing. This professional development opportunity was offered primarily to support instructors of languages for which a new LPE is in development. A total of 33 instructors attended the workshop, representing the following languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hmong, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. The workshop was very well received, and some attendees expressed interest in discussing implications for the instruction and assessment of language classes. Anyone interested in participating in a follow-up event should contact Stephanie at treat002@umn.edu.

As students repopulate our campus with the onset of a new semester, the Language Center continues to evolve to support the teaching and learning of languages at the University. As you walk through Jones Hall, you will notice quite a bit of activity and some significant changes this semester.

A New Classroom

In response to increasing class sizes we have remodeled Jones 15. We have replaced the rows of booths with a more open floor plan, placing tables along the perimeter of the room and two islands of tables in the center. We have effectively divided the space into quadrants. This way, we can accommodate up to 28 students simultaneously, working individually on brand new iMac computers, or convening either in small groups or four medium groups to work collaboratively on tasks. In addition to the new floor plan, we have also installed a new instructor desk that includes the standard equipment - iMac computer with MacDiLL software, video and audio players, as well as a document camera. In design, the remodeled classroom resembles our most popular classroom, Jones 30, with its open and accessible floor plan. Please come by to take a look and book your class in the new space. Let us know what you think!

TandemPlus / Multimedia Lab Coordinator

We also welcome a new staff member this semester. Kate Clements has joined us to serve as both the Coordinator for the Multimedia Lab (Jones 135) as well as the Coordinator for the TandemPlus program. Kate is no stranger to the technology available at the University and in the Language Center. While earning an MA in the ESL program here at the University, she served as the IT Fellow for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. In addition to assisting individual instructors, she spearheaded the transition of Spanish language courses from WebCT Vista to the Moodle course management system. Since receiving her degree, she has taught in the Minnesota English Language Program, often meeting with her classes in the computer classrooms in Jones Hall. She has shared some of her experiences with technology by presenting several workshops in the Language Center's iTeach workshop series. Her involvement with the TandemPlus program includes participating as a student with a native Spanish speaker in the Face-to-Face program, as well as recommending her students in the MELP program to participate in order to develop their English conversational skills. We are delighted to have Kate with us. Please welcome her to the Language Center.

Testing Program Grant

Our Testing program has received funding as a part of the Title VI grant administered by the Institute for Global Studies to develop new Language Proficiency Tests. Overseen by Monica Frahm, the project is directed by Gabriela Sweet who brings many years of test development and administration to the task. Their group is in the process of developing test items for Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and a second exam in Spanish. Temporarily located in Jones 110F, they are working at a fever pitch to produce these materials by the middle of November.

CLA-OIT Support

The CLA IT Fellows program has also undergone changes this fall. While previously the program provided up to 20 graduate fellows who were assigned to specific departments to help instructors with technology issues, the program will now rely on 15 undergraduate students to perform work such as developing Moodle sites for courses and working with multimedia. Instructors will work directly with 5 graduate students to develop concepts, who will then pass on the construction responsibilities to the undergraduate students. All language departments and the Language Center will be served by one person now, and we are extremely fortunate that the program has hired Lindsey Lahr to be the contact person for our area. Lindsey has been the IT Fellow for the Language Center and the Department of Asian Languages and Literature for the past two years. She has been working in our Development Studio in Jones 127 and helping instructors to digitize a variety of media as well as to make and edit professional level audio recordings. She will now work through the CLA-OIT office. If you have a request for Lindsey, the best way to contact her is through the CLA Help Desk. You can send an email to help@cla.umn.edu or call 4-HELP.

As the relatively new Director of the Language Center I am delighted to be working here at the University of Minnesota with such a dedicated staff and with such excellent facilities and support. Our mission is to promote and support the teaching and learning of world languages. Technology is an excellent tool to accomplish this mission. Our state-of-the-art facilities and equipment provide both access to information as well as tools to help students complete interesting and engaging multimedia projects. Our staff is extremely knowledgable about the possibilities of technology and continues to explore a wide variety of emerging technological applications that connect students with authentic materials and cultures, and with speakers of the languages that students are learning. We support students and instructors with technology assistance, and we also serve as a place for exploring the nature of language and second language acquisition itself. I encourage you to take advantage of the opportunities that the Language Center offers.

Wishing you all the best for a successful and productive fall semester,

Dan Soneson

We are pleased to announce some staffing changes and additions in the
Testing Program for fall semester. Joanne Peltonen, the Spanish Testing
Coordinator, will reduce her appointment to 75% through December 18 so
that she is available to conduct proficiency evaluations for Spanish-immersion students in the public school system. To fill this void,
Gabriela Sweet will join the Testing Program staff part-time for fall
semester. Gabriela has taught Spanish at U of M and has worked for CARLA
as an assessment coordinator. Welcome, Gabriela!

by Monica Eden, Director of Testing