Tracking Foreign Language Proficiency: Great (and not so great) Expectations
Location: Barbie Tootle Room at the Ohio Union
Date: Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Time: 4:00 to 5:30 pm – Reception to follow
Event Speaker: Dr. Susan Gass, University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University
In this talk, Dr. Gass will discuss the results of a federally-funded, large-data project, carried out at three state universities. Over a three-year period of time, she and her team 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. She 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? She will end with a discussion of the public availability of this large database.