Foreign Languages and Literatures Program Assessment

FLL established its Assessment Team in the fall of 2000. The Team’s first task was to articulate the current program objectives for student learning. Our objectives have traditionally been informed by the goals and guidelines developed by the American association of foreign language teachers, ACTFL. In addition we wished to frame our objectives in terms of PSU’s institutional mission and achieving practical outcomes for our students.

FLL objectives focus on developing

• communication skills and strategies in the written and spoken language,
• intellectual skills for critical inquiry,
• making cultural connections in and through the target language.

The Department completed an inventory of existing programs to get a snap shot of how well current courses supported program objectives. It also designed an assessment plan to gather data on how well students are meeting these objectives. The goal of our first project was to learn if students who are enrolling for third year course work at Portland State are where they need to be both in terms of their level of proficiency and expectations for the course. Our second goal has been to assess if students are making adequate progress through the FLL programs by their fourth-year.

We began our study with a pilot assessment of French and German, with the intention of offering them data to allow them to complete a program review. Spanish was included in the second round because the Spanish Program was just embarking on an intensive study and re-design of first year funded by a grant from the PEW Charitable Trust. Based on our experience we planned to make recommendations to the other majors, Chinese, Japanese and Russian and to include them in fourth year assessment.

PROGRAM REVIEW CYCLE:

2000-2001 Articulation of Current Departmental Learning Objectives
2001-2002 Third Year Language & Instructor Survey
2002-2003 Third/Fourth-Year Student Survey & Expansion to Spanish Third Year
2003-2004 Fourth Year Student Learning Outcomes

Initial Outcomes: After participating in the process and considering the data, the French program decided to implement a full three course language learning and skills-building sequence at the third year level to complement literature courses offered at the 300-level.

• The French program has restructured the third year sequence, adopting a new textbook with a more integrated approach to developing writing skills. The German program is still in the process of reviewing the data.

Discussion of the fourth-year assessment process and its outcomes planned for 2004-05 will help the Department develop a sustainable program of assessment and facilitate program review for all our majors.