Last August Dave wrote in about Integrated Performance Assessment. This is a repost:
Hi Ben:
I sent out the following email to the Latin folks, but it also affects other languages as well. Next week I am going to the IPA training and I would like to push back as hard as i can against its use, especially with novice learners. Has it already been discussed on the PLC? [ed. note: no, and it may affect some of our PLC members so thank you Dave for this information.]
Best,
Dave
Salvete,
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Integrated Performance Assessment (IPA) that ACTFL is supporting as the best way to assess language learning in a communicative context. The evaluation has three tasks, an interpretive one (listening or reading), an interpersonal one (conversation) and a presentational one (writing a letter, or making a poster, or a prepared speech). It goes very much hand in hand with the focus on the three modes of communication.
Next week at my school I am taking part in a two day training in IPA because I teach Spanish as well as Latin. To say that I am dreading it, is an understatement. The more I have read about it, the more incompatible it seems with the principles of CI. Specifically there are two aspects which trouble me: 1) The focus on output at even a novice level, and 2) the insistence on the use of ONLY “authentic” resources. If you are not familiar with ACTFL’s definition of “authentic” it refers to resources (texts) produced by native speakers for a native speaking audience (i.e. not designed for language learners). There is also an insistence on NOT modifying the text, or glossing or translating any unfamiliar vocabulary. In fact students are required to guess the meaning of unknown vocabulary from context. In other words, the “authentic” texts are valued in great part BECAUSE they are incomprehensible.
I wanted to share this with you also because there is a Latin example (intermediate level). I am including pics of it as an attachment (for private use only, please). It is based on a pair of Martial epigrams, which the students are not supposed to have seen before. It does not follow the guidelines exactly because there are glosses, however even so I know that I cannot easily read the poems, and I struggle to imagine an intermediate student sight “reading” them. The interpersonal task using twitter seems, perhaps, a bit more reasonable, but the presentational task of writing an elegiac couplet to make a joke or observation about a person seems incredible. Perhaps I am showing my bias because I work with more novice levels, but are students at an intermediate level equipped to attend to the demands of poetry as well as the language?
Really I wanted to see what other people think about this. My own opinions, shaped by my experience with IPA’s in Spanish are quite negative, but I imagine that to Latin folks this could represent a step forward because it does acknowledge that Latin can be used for more than reading. What do you all think?
Dave